LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Mechanism and Personality 



AN 



OUTLINE OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE LIGHT OF 
THE LATEST SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. 



BY 



FRANCIS A. SHOUP, D.D., 

Professor of Analytical Physics, University of the South. 



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BOSTON, U.S.A.: 

PUBLISHED BY GINN & COMPANY. 

1 891. 



33 



THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 



WASHINGTON 



ESS | 



Copyright, 1891, 
By FRANCIS A. SHOUP. 



All Rights Reserved. 



Typography by J. S. Cushing & Co., Boston, U.S.A. 
Presswork by Ginn & Co., Boston, U.S.A. 






To 

My Friend, 

THOMAS BRESLIN, 

who, 

of all the men it has been my happiness 

to know, is the most thoroughly 

altruistic. 



" The truth which draws 
Through all things upwards; that a two-fold world 
Must go to a perfect cosmos. Natural things 
And spiritual, — who separates those two 
In art, in morals, or the social drift, 
Tears up the bond of nature and brings death, 
Paints futile pictures, writes unreal verse, 
Leads vulgar days, deals ignorantly with men, 
Is wrong, in short, at all points." 

— -Aurora Leigh. 



"The reconciliation of physics and metaphysics lies in the acknowl- 
edgment of faults upon both sides; in the confession by physics that all the 
phenomena of nature are, in their ultimate analysis, known to us only as 
facts of consciousness ; in the admission by metaphysics, that the facts of 
consciousness are, practically, interpretable only by the methods and the 
formulae of physics." — Professor Huxley. 



PREFACE. 



SOME time ago a gentleman of excellent attainments 
requested the author of the following pages to recom- 
mend him a book which would give, within moderate compass, 
the present attitude of Philosophy in the light of the latest 
scientific research, and that in a way suited to the comprehen- 
sion of the ordinary reader. The author mentioned several 
books which he thought would in some sort answer the pur- 
pose, but at the same time had to confess that he could think 
of no one work which exactly met the case. Reflecting after- 
wards from time to time upon the subject, he was still unable 
to fix upon any one such book. 

It was in this way that the need of something to meet the 
growing inquiry as to what has become of metaphysic in the 
glare of the scientific thought of the day impressed itself upon 
the author, and that he conceived the idea of trying what he 
could do himself in the way of outlining an answer. These 
pages are the result of his effort. 

The author has tried to keep the general reader in mind, 
and, as a result, the book is largely elementary; but, while 
aiming at simplicity and clearness, he has not thought it best 
to avoid entirely the recognized terminology of the subject. 
Care has been taken, however, when introducing purely tech- 
nical terms, to give equivalent expressions in common speech. 
The author has been at times tempted — almost compelled — 

v 



VI PREFACE. 

to enter upon disputed ground, and to venture upon questions 
of considerable subtlety, but, for all that, the book will be 
found, in the main, fairly easy reading. 

With regard to materials, a free hand has been laid upon 
whatever was within reach ; and although it has been thought 
unnecessary to give detailed references, the reader will be able 
to know, in a general way, to whom credit is due. The author 
is free to confess his regret, however, that his references have 
been so meagre. 

The reader will find that there has been no effort to keep 
back or underrate the conclusions of the most advanced scien- 
tific thought, but that the burning questions between the 
Empiricists and Transcendentalists have been treated with 
perfect candor and openness. 

The metaphysic is, in the main, that of Lotze, or perhaps 
better, the Lotzian phase of Kant. The " Outlines of Meta- 
physic," lately translated by Professor Ladd (Ginn & Com- 
pany) , has been found most suitable for quotation, and, with 
the exception of a few passages from the " Mikrokosmus," the 
extracts from Lotze may be found in that English version. 

The thanks of the author are due to Dr. Henry H. Donald- 
son, Professor of Neurology in Clark University, for valuable 
assistance in revising Chapters III. to VII. inclusive, and to 
John Fearnley, M.A., of the University of the South, for efficient 
help in revising proofs. 

If this book shall be the means of directing speculative 

thought more in the lines marked out by Lotze, it will have 

served a useful purpose, in the opinion of 

THE AUTHOR. 
Sewanee, Tenn., January, 1891. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 



Scope and Limits of Skepticism 



What is truth? Incompleteness of Knowledge. Lack of per- 
manence. Difficulties of arriving at ultimate principles. The senses 
mendacious. The intellect open to attack. May we not be com- 
pelled to see things as they are not? Practical limits of doubt. 
Logical limits. Personality. The self an ultimate fact. The ' One 
and the many.' 

CHAPTER II. 



The Mechanical Basis of Phenomen 



Modern science and the older learning. All science dominated 
by mechanics. Reducible to mathematical forms. Forestalled 
by Descartes. Hobbes. Leibnitz. Attitude of modern physicists. 
Metaphysical basis of science obvious to all thinkers. 



CHAPTER III. 

Psycho-Mechanisms 18 

The cell-theory discarded. Protoplasmic movement. Max 
Schultze. Huxley. Uni-cellular organisms. Structural develop- 
ment. Professor Foster quoted. ' Metabolism.' Nervous system. 
Reflex action. Vivisection. Cerebral hemispheres. Effects of 
mutilations. Caution. Functions of different brain-areas not cer- 
tainlv determined. 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IV. 

PAGE 

Psycho-Mechanisms {continued) 28 

Professor Romanes quoted. Experiments in vivisection. Brain 
localizations. Electrical stimulations. Rate of nerve transmissions. 
Time required for action of nerve-centres. Rate of nerve-vibra- 
tions. The sympathetic system. Functions. Independent of voli- 
tion. Inhibition. Brain-development. Brain-mass. Different 
nationalities. 

CHAPTER V. 

The Senses — Touch, Taste, and Smell . 38 

The specific senses. Number indefinite. Touch fundamental. 
Pressure. End-organs. Threshold value. Weber's and Fech- 
ner's law. ' Local signs.' Pressure spots. Temperature spots. 
End-organs of taste. Stimuli. Classification. Sense of smell. 
End-organs of smell. Stimuli. Classification. Muscular sense. 
End-organs of motion. 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Sense of Hearing 48 

The ear. Structure. Corti's organ. Theories. Physical basis 
of sound. Intensity, pitch, quality. Illustrations. Partials. 
Tyndall quoted. Difference in people's sensibilities. Powers of 
discrimination. Range. The human voice. 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Sense of Vision 60 

Mechanism of the eye. Structure of the retina. End-organs. 
Rods and cones. Mechanical basis of vision. Color. ' Consecu- 
tive ' images. Tone, intensity, saturation. Yellow spot. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Chasm between Mechanism and Consciousness ...... 69 

Physiological research with respect to psycho-mechanisms. Pro- 
toplasm net pure and simple matter. Professor Romanes quoted. 



CONTENTS. IX 

PAGE 

Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, and Spencer not materialists. Hobbes 
quoted. The problem of relation between physiology and con- 
sciousness. The chasm recognized. Leaders of science quoted. 



CHAPTER IX. 
Personality in its Psychical Aspect 82 

Analysis of the psychical factor of personality. The three funda- 
mental modes of the self — sensation, cognition, and conation. A 
tri-unity, inseparable but logically distinguishable. Sub-conscious- 
ness. Unity and plurality. 

CHAPTER X. 

Development of the Psychical Aspect of Personality ... 86 

The relation of the mechanical and psychical factors. Mutu- 
ally necessary. The human organism at birth. The line between 
elementary consciousness and self-realization shadowy. Automatic 
action. Basic-personality. Evolution. Continuity and discontin- 
uity. Instincts. 'Jelly-specks.' Ants. ChcEtodon rostratus. The 
beaver. Domestic animals. Inverse order of intelligence and 
instinct. A Evolution as well as an evolution. Instincts gradu- 
ally replaced in ascending order of nature. 

CHAPTER XI. 
The Concept-Forming Process 97 

Muscular co-ordination. Education of the organism. Vital 
organs not under control of will. Analogous psychical conditions. 
Process of thought-development. Like and unlike. Discovery of 
meaning. Attention. Retention. Concepts. Concept-masses. 
Apperception. Thought as thought. Language. Introspection. 
1 Pure ' and ' empirical ego.' ' One ' and ' many.' A sense of 
'knowing' deeper than understanding. Personality antedates 
knowledge. 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XII. 

PAGE 

Differentiations of Self. Memory 109 

Consciousness. Differentiation of feeling, of cognition, of will. 
An end ideally first. Self-development. Perception. Intuition. 
Ideas in the mind not like objects without. Space. Time. Memory. 
Mechanical basis. Objection by Lotze. Complexity. Illustration 
from sound. Phenomena explicable upon theory of mechanical 
basis. Dr. Rush's case. Dr. Carpenter's Welshman. Coleridge's 
case. Power to recall the past. Sudden recollections. Law of 
association. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Imagination 126 

Definition. Classification. Cognitive and Sentient imagination. 
Economic and Rational. Artistic and Rhythmic. Music. Relation 
of memory and imagination. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Dreaming. Somnambulism. Hypnotism 133 

Phenomenon of dreaming. Sleep. Do we always dream in 
sleep? The brain a thought-machine. Consciousness a mere phe- 
nomenon. The brain in sleep. Mosso's observations. Character 
of dreams. Nightmare. Somnambulism. Case of student at 
Amsterdam. Case recorded by Dr. Abercrombie. German monk. 
Muscular feats. Double consciousness. Case of young lady at 
West Point. Hypnotism. Muscular effects. Dr. Charcot quoted. 
' Suggestions.' 

CHAPTER XV. 

The Understanding 149 

A technical phase of cognition. Faculty of Relations. Thought 
proper. The lower animals. Pain. The logical element in man. 
The syllogism. Dictum of Aristotle. Deduction and Induction. 
Reasoning. Reciprocal processes. 



CONTENTS. XI 

CHAPTER XVI. 

PAGE 

The Pure Reason 161 

Hypothetical. Intuitive Knowledge. Conditions of all explicit 
thought. Controversy about 'Innate Ideas.' Empirical Knowl- 
edge. Law of Identity. Law of Contradiction. Excluded Middle. 
Its questionable use in certain cases. Hamilton. Sufficient Reason. 
Causality. Hume. Locke. Leibnitz. The Laws of Motion. All 
Science based upon necessary truths. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Empirical and Rational Truth 175 

Conditional syllogisms and law of sufficient Reason. No law 
of the natural world above doubt. Not so in thought. l A priori? 
1 original,' etc., truths. Necessity the characteristic. Relation of 
Induction and Deduction. The basis of Induction. Intuition of 
space. The Infinite and Absolute. The * Philosophy of the Con- 
ditioned.' 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

The Bearing of EmpiricisxM on Personality 185 

Intuition of Time. Time the ground of motion. Space of 
mass. Cause conditions Space and Time. Inertia. Self-activity 
inconceivable in ' Thing.' Personality the only ground of efficient 
cause. ' Persistent Force.' Doubt as to the being of ' force ' as an 
entity. Professor Tait quoted. Spencer's effort to find an ultimate 
Reality. Energy implies Personality. Spencer's position sounder 
than that of his followers. Quoted. His ' unknown ' known. 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Feeling 199 

Classification. Pain and pleasure. Sensuous feeling. Her- 
bartian scheme. Intensity and quality in feeling. Caenesthesia. 
Esoteric and exoteric feeling. The one working from within 
emerges in the understanding; the other built up through the 
understanding. Practical bearing. 



Xll . CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XX. 

PAGE 

Feeling {continued') 211 

Rational Feeling. Esthetic Feeling. Beauty. Periodic motion. 
Music. Vision. Illusions. Berkeley's Theory of Vision. Knowl- 
edge through vision. Cheselden's case. Other cases. Other 
problems. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

Feeling {continued') 220 

Art. Ideal element. Sculpture. Painting. Music. Architec- 
ture. Poetry. Evolution of ethical feeling. The Good. Ethical 
treatment reserved to later stage. 

CHAPTER XXII. 
The Will 229 

Elementary effort. Emerges in conscious volition. Much that 
is commonly accounted free, mechanical. Liberty restricted to 
Purposive epoch. Inhibitory functions. Directive functions. The 
office of the will in developing emotional nature. Development 
of volitive powers. Moral aspect of the will. Penitence. 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
Unity of Personality 242 

Difficulties of question. Unity and manifoldness. Unity a 
primordial condition. Inferior organisms. Protozoa. Not two 
worlds, one spiritual and the other physical. Man a manifesta- 
tion of one person in two modes. The psychical and mechanical 
inseparable. Gross and sublimated matter. Visible and Invisible 
Universe. The ' Unseen Universe ' quoted. The mechanical mode 
has its only title to reality through personality. The Cicada. 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
What is 'Thing'? Construction of Matter 254 

Illusions. What underlies phenomena? Pure Being. 'Thing' 
that which affects and is affected. The position of Bishop Berke- 



CONTENTS. Xlll 



ley. Quoted. Analytical physics and construction of matter. 
Boscovich's theory. Molecular mechanics. Clerk Maxwell. Pro- 
fessor Tait. Sir W. Thompson's ' vortical atom.' Difficulties. Le 
Sage's theory. Ether. The physicists driven into metaphysics 
Atoms 'manufactured articles.' 

CHAPTER XXV. 

Mathematics not Ultimately Exact 275 

Position of mathematics in scientific inquiries. Mathematical 
processes develop contradictions. Surds. Asymptotes. Graphical 
illustration. Cissoid of Diodes. Other cases. Right lines inter- 
secting with no common point. The concept 'infinity.' Illustra- 
tion. 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

The Metaphysical Attitude of Change. Cause 283 

The problem of change. Quotation from Plato. The problem 
of causation. Influence * passing over.' Doctrine of ' Occasional- 
ism.' ' Pre-established Harmony.' ' Divine Assistance.' Lotze 
quoted. Causation, as such, inexplicable. 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

Relation of Personality to Space and Time, Mass and Motion . 294 

The concepts Space and Time. Subjective ground of Mass ?nd 
Motion. Not self-subsisting realities. Find their reality in Per- 
sonality. Reality of the Cosmos Personal. Soundness of scientific 
methods. No truth material. Personality necessary to Truth. 
Personality not a phenomenon. 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Some of the Great Metaphysical Systems 300 

Idealism. Fichte. Lotze quoted. Schelling. Hegelianism. 
Hegel quoted. Objections to absolute Idealism. Lotze's position 
commended. The Supreme Good. 



XIV CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

PAGE 

Ethical 313 

Self-activity necessary to morality. No liberty in Sensibility or 
Cognition as such. Choice. Motives. The 'Good.' Obligation. 
Man held to be omniscient. No obligation in Selfness. Altruism. 
How the will of the Supreme Good is Known. The ' Categorical 
Imperative.' 

CHAPTER XXX. 

The Nature and Functions of Conscience 325 

The admonitions of the moral monitor. Conscience discovers 
itself only upon change of moral purpose. Analogy between the 
functions of conscience and inertia. Analysis. Illustration of 
steamship. Moral momentum. 

CHAFrER XXXI. 

The Infinite Personality 333 

Personal good implies Personality in God. The Mosaic account 
of the origin of evil in man. Disobedience. Obedience. A class 
of theologians faulted. Conflict and agreement of the Finite and 
Infinite. Theology and Religion. Human aspirations. Quotation 
from Mrs. Browning. Conclusion. 



Mechanism and Personality, 

CHAPTER I. 

SCOPE AND LIMITS OF SKEPTICISM. 

What is Truth? Incompleteness of knowledge. Lack of permanence. 
Difficulties in arriving at ultimate principles. The senses mendacious. The 
intellect open to attack. May we not be compelled to see things as they 
are not? Practical limits of doubt. Logical limits. Personality. The S elf 
an ultimate fact. ' The one and the many.' 

THE lack of certitude in human knowledge and human 
destiny has always been a ground of anxiety and com- 
plaint. It is not alone a Roman Procurator, who, in mockery 
or despair, asks the perplexing question, " What is Truth ? " ; 
but every man, who thinks at all, must find the inquiry forcing 
itself upon his attention at times; and, too often, with the dismal 
refrain, "Who shall show us any good? " And yet it is a great 
mistake to inveigh against the skeptical element in man's nature. 
A little reflection must make it apparent that doubt is a neces- 
sary condition of knowledge in any form. Paradoxically stated, 
if we could know at once and perfectly, we should not know at 
all. It is not by light alone that objects are seen in the external 
world. If all shade and shadow were removed, there might be 
left indeed a dead, perfectly even and unvarying illumination ; 
but all sense of sight would be gone, and the external world 
blotted out. Doubt is the shadow of certitude, without which 
the world of Truth would vanish from human consciousness. 



2 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

It must be confessed that the extent to which skepticism 
may be carried is bewildering in the extreme ; but there is a 
limit which must be reached in thought at last — a practical 
limit unconsciously forced upon the unthinking at all times, 
and from which the tide turns back in a flood of unmistakable 
verity. It will be well to take a look into this yawning chasm 
of doubt and denial, that we may be more sure of our footing 
on the heights of the true and abiding. 

In the first place, every body knows how incomplete at best 
is all human knowledge. Those who know the most are most 
impressed with a sense of their inadequacy and ignorance. 
Every school-boy knows how Socrates could not understand 
the declaration of the oracle that he was the wisest man in 
Athens, until it came over him that it must be because he 
knew his own ignorance ; and how Sir Isaac Newton could 
fancy himself a little child gathering shells cast up by the sea, 
while the great ocean of Truth lay spread out in mystery before 
him. An ' educated ignorance ' is but another expression for 
the highest stage of human knowledge. 

Then again the little that one does know has no fixedness 
and permanence. Every day brings changes — every varying 
mood causes modifications and colorings. The most firmly 
settled opinions are constantly assailed by suggestions of doubt. 
No statement — even the simplest — can be made that is not 
open to question. Suppose one should attempt to teach a 
child something of the law of gravitation. He lets a pebble 
drop from his hand, and asks the child why it falls, explaining 
that it is because all bodies are attracted to the centre cf the 
earth. The explanation is not true. That body and all other 
bodies are attracted, not by the earth alone, but by the sun 
and moon and all other bodies. He corrects himself, enun- 
ciating the law of gravitation : Every body attracts every other 
body with a force which varies inversely as the square of the 
distance, and directly as the mass. False again. This is only 



SCOPE AND LIMITS OF SKEPTICISM. 3 

true for sensible distances. When one passes within molecu- 
lar limits, the law undergoes a change, — perhaps a thousand 
alternations of attraction and repulsion ; and it is hopeless to 
attempt to follow it. But one cannot be allowed to go even so 
far in peace. What is a body? No one knows. We may say 
it is that which is made up of particles, which are composed 
of molecules, which in turn are composed of atoms. But what 
is an atom ? We do not know. What is a molecule ? It is an 
hypothetical combination or system of atoms, — that is, of ele- 
ments which nobody can know nor conceive of. Are there any 
atoms? Nobody knows» It is not only doubted, but stoutly 
denied. What is attraction or repulsion? Nobody knows. 
What is force? Not only does nobody know; but the ad- 
vanced mathematicians and physicists are so seriously skepti- 
cal as to the existence of any such ' thing ' that they are doing 
their best to banish the word from the vocabulary of scientific 
terms. Thus there is not much left of the definition of gravi- 
tation ; but even what remains is equally open to doubt. 

It must be confessed that the skeptic has got on pretty well 
already in his work of demolition ; but he has broad fields yet 
before him for the exercise of his destructive propensity. He 
attacks the entire external world, and denies its existence. 
Take any object, as the long-suffering tree of the metaphysi- 
cians : how do we know that it exists ? We see it. See what ? 
The color — light and shade. But are these the tree? No; 
they are the sensations produced through the eye by modifica- 
tions of light. Then they are something which the tree effects ; 
not what it is. 

Bat it will be said, We can touch it. Yes, and what do we 
find? That it is hard, rough, cold and all that : — but these are 
not the tree. They are states or conditions, — called ' proper- 
ties ' or ' accidents ' — and so we may go on through every 
possible test of the senses, and we shall only find other 
properties, or accidents, no one of which, nor all of them com- 



4 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

bined, can be the tree. The skeptic still asks, what is ' it ' — 
what is ' The-thing-in-itself ? ' 

He asks further, When one sees objects in a dream, are they 
real ? Have they ' thingness ' which supports the properties 
or attributes, such as color, shape, size and whatever else they 
seem to have ? The sleeper thinks so at the time. Why may 
it not be that we only think they have all these in our waking 
moments? Or, how do we know which are our waking 
moments? Why may not the dream-world be the reality, 
and that which we call the real world be the dream? 

But even yet the skeptic is not satisfied. He has cast sus- 
picion upon the external world ; he next attacks the thought- 
world. 

One must get all material of thought through experience, 
and experience must come through the senses. But the senses 
are not infallible. By an artful combination of mirrors, the 
most successful delusions are practised by the modern magi- 
cian. Every body is misled from time to time by tricks of 
vision. The ear is even more fallible, and all the senses, even 
touch, are constantly deceived. Information received through 
fallible sources, from the nature of the case, must be open to 
suspicion. 

But the mental powers and operations are themselves mutable 
and uncertain. Memory cannot be trusted implicitly. We 
find ourselves constantly mistaken in our recollection of things 
and events; and memory is absolutely necessary to any sort of 
knowledge. But even if it were never caught limping, how do 
we know that it is not always persistently and consistently false ? 
What can we do but simply take what it tells us of the past as 
true without possibility of verification? 

But in point of fact, all our ideas and opinions have in 
them undeniable sources of change and uncertainty. The 
mind itself is not the same from youth to age, and no one 
can tell at what stage it can best be trusted. Its grasp and 



SCOPE AND LIMITS OF SKEPTICISM. 5 

flexibility undergo daily changes, through variation in health 
— through fits of passion, moods of despondency, the use of 
intoxicants and the effects of environment. All of these jang- 
ling voices cannot be true, and how can we be sure of any one 
of them? Then again, one's way of thinking is greatly modi- 
fied by education, religion, birth, manners and customs, inter- 
est, and a thousand external circumstances. Some of these, or 
all of them must be distorting j and how shall we say that the 
Hindoo mother, the Howling Dervish, and the modern Thug, 
are not all equally justified in their conclusions ? 

The skeptic is not done yet. He asks — especially in the per- 
son of certain pseudo-scientists — why should not the mind, with 
all thought, be but an effect, like the blaze of a candle, or any 
other mechanical or chemical reaction? We can trace the 
motion from any external stimulus along the sensory and motor 
nerves to and from the nerve centres in the brain, — we can 
localize these centres and note their action : what more is 
needed ? If the quiet, restful earth, and all that goes on in it is 
but the effect of mass and motion, why should we look further 
for an explanation of thought ? Call it a phenomenon of mat- 
ter and be content ! 

Or again, — and one can go no farther — even admitting that 
there is an infallible criterion of certitude, and that in spite of 
all that has been said, one could find it, how do we know that 
it would reveal that which is real — that the power behind 
nature and all phenomena has not so made us that we are com- 
pelled to see things quite otherwise than they are — that what 
we take for truth, and must take for truth is after all a delusion, 
unreal and false? The objects of the external world when 
seen through colored glasses, take the color of the glasses ; 
why may not the whole thought-world appear what it is not, 
because it is seen through a medium which is forced upon us, 
and which gives a fictitious tone and character to truth ; and 
so presents it to us as what it is not? 



6 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

Even such a radical position as this is possible, and as an 
hypothesis it is irrefutable. We should have to be given another 
set of senses with which to examine this hyper-sensuous world, 
and compare the results with our present knowledge, before 
we could know whether we should see things as we do now, 
if we were angels or inhabitants of Mars or some other possible 
world. But even then we should only know that our new 
senses made things look to us as they would to an angel or a 
Martian ; but the question would again obtrude itself— Does the 
angel or the Martian see things as they are? and so it would 
again and again, if we had a thousand sets of senses. No one 
set could do more than our present senses do, — that is, do just 
what is their business to do. The very highest created being — 
though he be only less than the All-Father, can know only as 
his powers and capacities enable him to know ; and we are in 
no worse case. He would know more, doubtless, but he could 
not know with greater certainty. He too could doubt, — doubt 
as radically as man, — doubt being, as we have seen, an abso- 
lutely necessary condition of knowledge to any finite intelli- 
gence. If, then, we do not demand to be as Gods, — if we are 
to remain as created beings, — if there are to be created beings 
at all, there is no truth, — there can be no truth except as it is 
made known or revealed to the creature as he is, with and 
through the limitations which make him a creature. That is 
a false and absurd philosophy which attempts to carry one out 
of the scope of the actual and asks how things are or could be, 
to another order of beings than man. We are men, and in the 
man-world ; and the very truth is the truth that man knows, or 
can know. 

But it will be remembered that I said in the beginning of 
this discussion, that there is a practical limit to doubt uncon- 
sciously forced upon the unthinking at all times. By the neces- 
sity of man's nature, he cannot live in utter doubt and negation. 
After the sum of all actual doubt is reckoned up, there remains 



SCOPE AND LIMITS OF SKEPTICISM. 7 

in his practical life a far vaster sum of unquestioned reality, 
through which, indeed, the very doubt and his own existence 
are made possible. Question and deny as we may, we have 
faith in our senses ; and we show it every moment of our lives. 
There is no man who does not thoroughly believe that the earth 
is under his feet, and that if he does not take food he will die. 
There never was a man who did not know that there were 
other men about him, and that there were rights and duties 
growing out of the relations between them. There never was 
a man who, uncertain about a fact, did not know that if his 
means of investigation were sufficiently enlarged, the doubt 
would be removed. Granted that the senses do sometimes 
mislead us, does not this very knowledge emerge from the far 
deeper knowledge that they commonly do not? and are we not 
certain that if due precaution were taken, — if the obstructing 
or misleading elements were removed, the deception would go 
too ? Is not the universal and necessary consciousness that we 
must not always trust the senses a certainty ? and does it not 
carry with it the further and deeper conviction that there is an 
infallible criterion, if we can only be sufficiently informed ? As 
Jouffroy, whose line of thought I have in good part followed, 
says, " The cause of our faculties deceiving us, is not the want 
of a criterion to distinguish the proper from the improper 
exercise of them, but carelessness or haste in not using this 
criterion." 

With regard to the question of the accidents, or properties 
of bodies, and that ■ thing-in-itself ' which supports them, I 
have only to say here that the difficulty is one which presents 
itself only to the philosopher, and will come up for considera- 
tion further on. People at large are not troubled with any such 
abstraction, but innocently assume as the philosopher does also, 
when he is not philosophizing, that what lies spread out before 
him, as land and sea and sky, are simply what they seem. I 
also pass for the present that great domain of necessary truths, 



8 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

or presuppositions of our nature, as we shall be able to get at 
it better further on. 

So much for the practical limits of skepticism. Let us now 
consider briefly the question from a purely logical standpoint. 
We are told that Descartes, the father of modern speculative 
thought, shut himself out from the world, and deliberately set 
himself to the work of carrying doubt to its direst limit. He 
found that there is one fact which stands out clear and distinct in 
the midst of one's most determined effort at denial, — and that 
is, the fact of one's own existence. Doubt as I may, I cannot 
doubt that I doubt. The ego is necessarily posited or affirmed 
in the very act of doubting. Consciousness is beforehand in 
forcing the knowledge of self upon me in the act of construing 
the notion of denial in any form, and in enunciating my con- 
clusion the "self" is affirmed as a necessary condition: it is 
/ that doubt. 

The formula in which Descartes embodied this fundamental 
verity, ' I think, therefore I am ' {cogito ergo sum) — has been 
much criticised and discussed. There is no reasonable ques- 
tion that the philosopher intended it not as an argument, but 
as an incontestable postulate. But it is a matter of no moment 
to us here what he may have intended ; the truth remains. We 
need only the two words, ' I doubt.' They cover the whole 
range of skepticism; and it is logically impossible to entertain 
or formulate the expression of any sort of doubt whatever with- 
out positing incontestably the belief on the part of the doubter, 
in his own existence. 

But this assertion, — <I doubt,' — which lies at the threshold 
of all questionings, is pregnant with a further truth, equally im- 
portant, and equally obvious. One could never have the slight- 
est consciousness of self without the consciousness of the not- 
self. If the ego were in a state of absolute isolation — a unit, 
without that which is other than itself, even its own parts or 
limitations, there could be no possible variation in its modes 



SCOPE AND LIMITS OF SKEPTICISM. 9 

or states, it could have no possible experience — there could be 
nothing to think about, and so no thought whatever, and no 
consciousness of existence. Thus the knowledge of the self 
carries with it necessarily, the knowledge of the non-self with 
its unending phenomena. And thus that flood of doubt, which 
we so freely admitted in the beginning, returns upon us in an 
overwhelming sense of certainty. It does not yet appear what 
the non-ego is ; but that it is somewhat we cannot deny. We 
still know that the senses are not always to be relied upon, but 
we know also, that they are bearing their testimony^ and it 
remains for the self to weigh it and determine. What we do 
know, and must know without question, is that we think there 
is an external world ; and what one thinks and cannot by any 
possibility not think, one knows. Every sensation is at least a 
sensation, and in so far real : whether the external stimulus 
be indeed what w r e take it to be is quite another matter. It is 
just in this fact that flexibility is left us, and that we are saved 
from dead mechanism — a dire necessity without the possi- 
bility of thought or action. Of these two factors — the self and 
that which is not self — it will be seen, — and it cannot be logi- 
cally disputed, — that the positive, living factor is the self. It 
would be premature to enter upon a discussion of the relation 
of these two factors at this stage of our investigation. It is 
enough to emphasize the fact that the world of mass and 
motion can be known only in thought ; and that thought is the 
distinguishing characteristic of the self. 

But now, what are we to understand by the ego, the me, the 
self? First, negatively (speaking for myself), I do not mean 
the body, nor the brain, nor any special organ of the body — I 
do not mean the memory, nor imagination, understanding, will, 
or consciousness, nor even what is commonly called mind or 
soul. I do mean all these — the whole self — all that goes to 
make up what we know as ' person ' — in one sense compounded 
of parts, in another and higher sense, absolutely partless — a unit, 



IO MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

not susceptible of any sort of fraction or division. We see in 
it a living exemplification of the problem about which philoso- 
phy, ancient and modern, has ever busied itself — the co-exist- 
ence of the ' one and the many.' As 'many ' it is composed 
of two chief factors — a marvellous mechanism, and an incom- 
prehensible and dominant psychical energy : as ' one ' it is a 
living and ineffable personality. The nature and existence of 
the mechanism, and of the psychic factor are known only 
through the personality which for each and every one of us is 
the one primordial and necessary fact of the universe. 



THE MECHANICAL BASIS OF PHENOMENA. II 



CHAPTER II. 

THE MECHANICAL BASIS OF PHENOMENA. 

Modern science and the older learning. All science dominated by 
mechanics. Reducible to mathematical forms. Forestalled by Descar- 
tes. Hobbes. Leibnitz. Attitude of modern physicists. Metaphysical 
basis of science obvious to all thinkers. 

IT is not surprising that men's minds should be in some fer- 
ment as to what is true, when one reflects upon the universal 
upturning in physical science, in the last two or three genera- 
tions. Few facts, to say nothing of theories, are left unmolested. 
The old learning is so tattered and torn as to be no longer 
respectable. New discoveries and new hypotheses have crowded 
each other with such rapidity, that one feels fairly dazed when 
one thinks of it. Science has done such a mighty work already, 
and gives promise of so much to come, that it is not wonderful 
it has so fully engaged the attention of the age. It is not 
strange that so many hands seize the scalpel and microscope, — 
the battery and balances to push on the work, and that so 
many brave hearts put their trust in them as the only sure test 
of truth, — they are so definite and practical. It is quite natural 
that they who are once taken with the experimental method 
should think they have no time, and show so plainly that they 
have no patience, with the old hair-splitting, foggy metaphysic. 
And yet it will hardly do to cast contempt upon the old thinkers. 
The seductive path of positive science leads off into regions 
of speculative thought at numberless points ; and if Science does 
not already know that she is caught in the toils of metaphysics, 
it is only because she does not yet fully recognize her contact 



12 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

with the ultimate. Experimental science has been a trifle 
heady perhaps in taking leave of the old thinkers in the 
beginning ; and she need not be surprised to find herself over- 
taken by them once more. Her revelations have rarely proved 
to be new, except in mere details, or new only in the sense that 
the multitude knows little of what the philosophers of the past 
have clearly seen, and definitely announced. 

This could be abundantly verified by a study of even Greek 
philosophy, but that would carry us too far afield. We must 
content ourselves with a brief reference to the thinkers of 
modern times, but yet far enough in the past to have preceded 
by many years the scientific flood which seems to be sweeping 
everything before it. 

The central principle of modern physics may be stated as 
follows : " All variations of matter, or all diversity of its forms, 
depend on motion " : but these are not the words of an ana- 
lytical physicist of our day, but of Descartes. He saw, as 
Professor Huxley says, that the discoveries of Galileo meant 
that the universe is governed by mechanical laws ; while those 
of Harvey made it equally clear that the same laws preside 
over the operations of that portion of the world which is nearest 
to us, namely our own bodies. In his essay, "Traite de 
l'Homme," he arrives at " that purely mechanical view of 
vital phenomena towards which modern physiology is striving." 
Speaking of the mechanism of the circulation of the blood, he 
says, that the motion is as much the necessary result of the 
structure of the heart, as that of a clock is of the " force, the 
situation, and the figure, of its weight, and of its wheels." Nor 
does he stop with this. "The animal spirits " he says "resem- 
ble a very subtle fluid, or a very pure and vivid flame, and are 
continually generated in the heart, and ascend to the brain as 
a sort of reservoir. Hence they pass into the nerves, and are 
distributed to the muscles, causing contraction, or relaxation, 
according to the quantity." 



THE MECHANICAL BASIS OF PHENOMENA. 1 3 

He goes into details and describes the animal body as an 
automaton, — explaining the action of what we now call stimuli 
upon the sense-organs. He illustrates his meaning by likening 
the action to the mechanism of certain grottos and fountains 
in royal gardens. " The nerves of the machine " — he is 
speaking of an hypothetical human organism — " which I am 
describing may very well be compared to the pipes of these 
water- works ; its muscles and its tendons to the other various 
engines and springs which seem to move them ; its animal 
spirits to the water which impels them, of which the heart is 
the fountain ; while the cavities of the brain are the central 
office. . . . The external objects which, by their mere pres- 
ence, act upon the organs of the senses, and which by this 
means determine the corporal machine to move in many dif- 
ferent ways, according as the parts of the brain are arranged, 
are like the strangers who, entering into some of the grottos of 
these water-works, unconsciously cause the movements which 
take place in their presence. For they cannot enter without 
treading upon certain planks so arranged that, for example, if 
they approach a bathing Diana, they cause her to hide among 
the reeds ; and if they attempt to follow her, they see approach- 
ing a Neptune who threatens them with his trident ; or if they 
try some other way, they cause some monster who vomits 
water into their faces, to dart out ; or like contrivances, accord- 
ing to the fancy of the engineers who made them. And lastly, 
when the rational soul is lodged in the machine, it will have 
its principal seat in the brain, and will take the place of the 
engineer, who ought to be in that part of the works with which 
all the pipes are connected, when he wishes to increase, or to 
slacken, or in some way to alter their movements." He goes 
on further even than this, and includes in his mechanism the 
organs of " common sense and imagination " — indeed the most 
pronounced mechanical physiologist could go no further. Pro- 



14 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

fessor Huxley declares that the spirit of what he says "is exactly 
that of the most advanced physiology of the present day." 

Thomas Hobbes, a very different thinker, clearly and in terms 
anticipated the results of the latest study in Physiological Psy- 
chology. He says : — " All the qualities called sensible are, in 
the object which causeth them, but so many motions of the 
matter by which it presseth on our organs diversely. Neither in 
us that are pressed are they anything else than divers motions ; 
for motion produceth nothing but motion. . . . The cause of 
sense is the external body or object, which presseth the organ 
proper to each sense, either immediately, as in taste and touch, 
or mediately, as in hearing, seeing and smelling ; which pres- 
sure, by the mediation of the nerves, and other strings and 
membranes of the body, continued inwards to the brain and 
heart, causeth there a resistance, or counter-pressure or endeav- 
our . . . and because going, speaking, and the like voluntary 
motions, depend always upon a precedent thought of whither, 
which way and what ; it is evident that the imagination [or 
idea] is the first internal beginning of all voluntary motion. 
And although unstudied men do not conceive any motion at all 
to be there, when the thing moved is invisible ; or the space it 
is moved in is, for the shortness of it, insensible ; yet that doth 
not hinder but that such motions are. These small beginnings 
of motion, within the body of man, before they appear in walk- 
ing, speaking, striking, and other visible actions, are commonly 
called endeavour." 

Professor Romanes, the distinguished English physicist, in 
commenting on this passage which he quotes in his Rede Lec- 
ture of '85, at the University of Cambridge, declares it to be in 
perfect accord with the best scientific thought of to-day — that 
it has now been proved beyond doubt to be only in virtue of 
the invisible movements which he inferred that the nervous 
system is enabled to perform its functions. 

But while nothing could be more clear than the position of 



THE MECHANICAL BASIS OF PHENOMENA. 1 5 

Hobbes with regard to the mechanical constitution of the human 
body, he was neither original nor alone in his declarations. He 
was not only anticipated some two thousand years by Heraclitus 
and Empedocles and Democritus, and on down through Epicu- 
rus and Lucretius, but as we have seen Descartes had forestalled 
him by many years, and Leibnitz and Huygens, both of whom 
were quite as pronounced on the subject, were his contempora- 
ries. Leibnitz says : " Everything in nature is effected mechani- 
cally " ; and he carried the doctrine of motion into all phases 
of his philosophy as a necessary postulate. Huygens, the father 
of the undulatory theory of light, declares that "all natural 
effects are, and must be, conceived mechanically, unless we are 
to renounce all hope of understanding anything in physics." A 
little later, but years before the descent of the present scientific 
avalanche, Father Boscovich put forth his theory of the con- 
struction of matter, in which motion and force alone give rise 
to all the phenomena of substance. 

It was not, however, until after Priestly, Lavoisier, Dalton and 
the rest of them gave the world a new chemistry — not until after 
the announcement of the atomic theory, the establishment of 
the doctrine of the conservation of energy, and the mechanical 
equivalent of heat, that the latest phase of this venerable theory 
burst upon the thought of the world with its brilliant achieve- 
ments. Kirchoff, Helmholtz, Clerk Maxwell, and a host of other 
mathematicians and physicists took up the inquiry, and seem 
to have settled the matter finally upon a mechanical basis as 
well in organic as in inorganic nature. The conclusions of 
Wundt may be taken as the accepted attitude in physiology, the 
most subtle domain of nature, and perhaps the ultimate reach of 
mechanics. He says : " The view that has now become domi- 
nant (in physiology), and is ordinarily designated as the mechani- 
cal or physical view, has its origin in the causal conception, 
long prevalent in the kindred departments of natural science, 
which regards nature as a single chain of causes and effects 



l6 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

wherein the ultimate laws of causal action are the laws of 
mechanics. Physiology thus appears as a branch of applied 
physics, its problems being a reduction of vital phenomena to 
general physical laws, and thus ultimately to the fundamental 
laws of mechanics." 

The statement of Du Bois Reymond is equally clear and 
positive — " Natural science more accurately expressed, scien- 
tific cognition of nature, or cognition of the natural world by 
the aid, and in the sense of theoretical physical science — is a 
reduction of the changes in the material world to motions of 
atoms caused by central forces independent of time, or as a 
resolution of the phenomena of nature into atomic mechanics. 
It is a fact of psychological experience, that, whenever such a 
reduction is successfully effected, our craving for causality is, 
for the time, wholly satisfied. The propositions of mechanics 
are reducible to mathematical forms, and carry with them the 
same apodictic certainty which belongs to the propositions of 
mathematics. When the changes in the material world have 
been reduced to a constant sum of potential and kinetic energy 
inherent in a constant mass of matter, there is nothing left in 
these changes for explanation." 

There is no disposition on the part of any school of thought 
of fair respectability to question the general correctness of the 
statement embodied in the above quotations, nor to deny that 
the position of science on the general subject is, so far as it 
goes, a just explanation of the phenomena of nature ; but we 
shall see, I hope, that there is a long way beyond the utmost 
reach of mass and motion, upon which it can take no step. 
It is not in the least surprising, however, that people who are 
unread in philosophy — and that means all except one here 
and there — should feel themselves in a state of spiritual 
asphyxia when they comprehend the sweep of the mechanical 
claims ; and the case is made apparently far worse when the 
further researches of Darwin and Wallace, and that host of 



THE MECHANICAL BASIS OF PHENOMENA. 1 7 

able collaborators in the evolutionary processes of nature are 
taken into account. 

It does not seem necessary to our present purpose, at least at 
this point, to touch upon what is commonly known as the 
Darwinian theory ; though I may remark in passing that a 
sound philosophy has no quarrel with it in its general aspects, 
nor as an explanation from the mechanical side of the phe- 
nomena about which it is concerned. We shall see, however, 
that it is seriously at fault in leaving out of sight or making 
little of the primordial factor of personality in its explanation of 
the processes of nature. 

It is necessary that we should try to get a right notion of 
the latest results of the mechanical theory in its physiological 
aspect, not to combat it in any wise, but that we may be helped 
to right conclusions in the difficult inquiry as to the relations of 
Mechanism and Personality. 



1 8 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 



CHAPTER III. 



PSYCHO-MECHANISMS. 



The cell- theory modified. Protoplasmic movement. Max Schultze. 
Huxley. Uni-cellular organisms. Structural development. Professor 
Foster quoted. ' Metabolism.' Nervous system. Reflex action. Vivi- 
section. Cerebral hemispheres. Effects of mutilations. Caution. Func- 
tions of different brain-areas not certainly determined. 

THE cell-theory of physiology worked its way into favor 
gradually under the improved use of the microscope. 
From about 1835 it rapidly developed, until it culminated in 
the hands of, perhaps, Max Schultze in 1854. 

This theory taught that all the parts of an animal or vegetable 
body, however different in appearance and structure, were built 
up of variously modified cells ; and much emphasis was placed 
upon the cell-membrane, cell-contents and nucleus, with the 
idea that their modifications would account for divers organs, 
and their manifold functions. 

This hope was doomed to disappointment, for within ten 
years of the researches of Schultze which had seemingly estab- 
lished the theory, that same histologist threw over the whole 
business of membranes as in anywise essential and retained 
only the enclosed living matter with its nucleus. He saw that 
the work done by the ' cell ' was not so much the result of its 
cellular structure, as that that structure itself was a result of a 
formless living substance within, which he called protoplasm. 
The use of this word, protoplasm, now so common, dates from 
the publications of the researches of Schultze between 1861-63. 
Von Mohl had proposed the word in 1846, though without a 



PSYCHO-MECHANISMS. 19 

proper conception of the thing. The credit of the discovery 
has to be divided among several. The French physicist 
Dujardin is no doubt entitled to the credit of priority in dis- 
covery, but the name he proposed — 'sarcode ' — did not adapt 
itself to the fancy, perhaps, and lacked the articulate roll of the 
other, and it has fallen into disuse. 

The inquiry had been pushed back an important step by the 
recognition that, as Huxley puts it, the cells " are no more the 
producers of the vital phenomena than the shells scattered in 
orderly lines along the seabeach are the instruments by which 
the gravitative force of the moon acts upon the ocean. Like 
these, the cells mark only where the vital tides have been, and 
how they have acted." Hence arose, what may be called, the 
protoplasmic movement — "a movement which, throwing over- 
board altogether all conceptions of life as the outcome of 
organism, or the mechanical result of structural conditions, 
attempts to put physiology on the same footing as physics and 
chemistry, and regards all vital phenomena as the complex 
product of certain fundamental properties exhibited by matter, 
which, either from its intrinsic nature or from its existing in 
peculiar conditions, is known as living matter, — " mechanical 
contrivances in the form of organs serving only to modify in 
special ways the results of the exercise of these fundamental 
activities, and in no sense determining their initial develop- 
ment." 

It is to be understood, then, that from the lowest possible 
forms of animal life in the protozoa, as well as in the lowest 
vegetable structures to the highest development in man, all 
tissues — all organs, nerves, muscles, cartilages — and whatever 
distinctions of tissue there may be, are built up out of the 
same protoplasmic unit. 

It is not necessary to go into detail as to how structural 
forms are built up out of this structureless basis of life. In its 
simplest form, a single unit-mass constitutes a living being, as 



20 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

in the amoeba. There cannot be said to be any distinction of 
parts ; though perhaps this is not absolutely true : one such 
being seems to be elementary, presenting only one cellular 
development, but, while without organs or differentiations, it 
has nevertheless in itself many potencies, or capacities. All 
organs, looking backwards, find themselves despecialized, the 
unit-mass performing the functions of each as occasion requires. 
A unit-mass has the power of assimilation, by which it changes 
dead food into its living self: it has the power of movement or 
contractibility by which it adjusts itself to the performance of 
its functions as an animal, changing its form constantly, and it 
has sensitiveness or irritability which enables it to respond to 
external stimuli. 

It is therefore very far from a unicum — oneness without 
marks or distinctions of form, states or power. It is simple 
indeed compared with the unending variety of specialized 
forms growing out of it, but as the meeting place, or common 
ground of all these it must, in its potentialities at least, be 
infinitely complex. It presents again the problem of ' the one 
and the many.' 

I quote Professor Foster in Encyclopedia Britannica [Phys- 
iology] , upon whom we may confidently rely : " The internal 
changes leading to these movements may begin, and the move- 
ments themselves be executed by any part of the uniform body, 
and they may take place without any obvious cause. So far 
from being always the mere passive results of the action of 
extrinsic forces, they may occur spontaneously, that is, without 
the coincidence of any recognizable disturbance whatever in 
the external conditions to which the body is exposed. They 
appear to be analogous to what in higher animals we speak 
of as acts of volition. They may, however, be provoked by 
changes in external conditions. A quiescent amoeba may be 
excited to activity by the touch of some strange body, or by 
some other want, — what, in the ordinary language of Physi- 



PSYCHO-MECHANISMS. 2T 

ology, is spoken of as stimulus. The protoplasmic mass is not 
only mobile, but sensitive. When a stimulus is applied to one 
part of the surface a movement may commence in another and 
quite distant part of the body ; that is to say, molecular dis- 
turbances appear to be propagated along its substance without 
visible change. The uniform protoplasmic mass of the amoeba 
exhibits the rudiments of those attributes or powers which we 
described as being the fundamental characteristics of the mus- 
cular and nervous structures of the higher animals. 

" These facts, and other considerations which might be 
brought forward, lead to the tentative conception of protoplasm 
as being a substance (if we may use the word in a somewhat 
loose sense) not only unstable in nature but subject to incessant 
change, existing indeed as the expression of incessant molecular, 
that is, chemical and physical, change, very much as a fountain 
is the expression of an incessant replacement of water. We 
may picture to ourselves this total change which we denote by 
the term ' metabolism ' as consisting on the one hand of a 
downward series of changes (katabolic changes), a stair of 
many steps, in which more complex bodies are broken down 
with the setting free of energy into simpler and simpler waste 
bodies, and on the other hand of an upward series of changes 
{anabolic changes), also a stair of many steps, by which the 
dead food, of varying simplicity or complexity, is, with the 
further assumption of energy, built up into more and more 
complex bodies. The summit of this double stair we call 
' protoplasm.' Whether we have the right to speak of it as a 
single body, in the chemical sense of the word, or as a mixture 
in some way of several bodies, whether we should regard it as 
the very summit of the double stair, or as embracing as well 
the topmost steps on either side, we cannot at present tell, — 
even if there be a single substance forming the summit, its 
existence is absolutely temporary : at one instant it is made, 
and at the next un-made. Matter which is passing through the 



22 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

phases of life rolls up the ascending steps to the top, and forth- 
with rolls down on the other side. . . . Further, the dead food, 
itself fairly but far from wholly stable in character, becomes 
more and more unstable as it rises into the more complex liv- 
ing material. It becomes more and more explosive, and when 
it reaches the summit its equilibrium is overthrown and it actu- 
ally explodes. The whole downward stair of events seems in 
fact to be a series of explosions, by means of which the energy 
latent in the dead food, and augmented by the touches through 
which the dead food becomes living protoplasm, is set free. 
Some of this food energy is used up again within the material 
itself, in order to carry on this same vivification of dead food ; 
the rest leaves the body as heat or motion. Sometimes the 
explosions are, so to speak, scattered, going off as it were irreg- 
ularly throughout the material, like a quantity of gunpowder 
sprinkled over a surface, giving rise to innumerable minute 
puffs, but producing no massive visible effects. Sometimes they 
take place in unison, many occurring together, or in such rapid 
sequence that a summation of their effects is possible, as in 
gunpowder rammed into a charge, and we are then able to 
recognize their result as visible movement, or as appreciable 
rise of temperature." 

The human body is composed of substances varying in molec- 
ular structure, each and all built up out of, or by means of 
protoplasm, and, however dissimilar in appearance and func- 
tion, called tissues of the body. We are especially concerned 
with that most delicate system which may be called the border- 
land of the spirit world, and which certainly serves as the 
physical basis of all psychical action. This is called the ner- 
vous system, and without doubt it dominates the whole bodily 
organism. In immediate connection with it, and in necessary 
co-operation with it, we have the muscular system. 

There are two general classes of nerves, the sensory and the 
motor (also called afferent and efferent) . They are, so far as 



PSYCHO-MECHANISMS. 23 

is known, of the same composition, being highly irritable fibres 
or strings, the sensory nerves normally conducting stimuli from 
the periphery or external surfaces to nerve-centres in the spinal 
cord, or the brain, and the motor system from the nerve-cen- 
tres to the various muscles and other organs of the body. A 
stimulus being applied at the extremity or at any point along 
the course of a sensory nerve, an irritation or molecular move- 
ment, called a wave or impulse, is sent along the nerve till it 
reaches a nerve-centre, whence after a certain delay another 
impulse issues, out from the nerve-centre along the motor nerve, 
until it reaches, for example, the proper muscle, whereupon 
the muscle contracts. The action of the nerve extremity in 
response to an external stimulus, and the propagation of the 
impulse to the nerve-centre is due to the protoplasmic sensi- 
bility. The reaction is commonly looked upon as purely me- 
chanical or non-mental in cases where the lower nerve-centres 
alone are concerned and is then called a reflex action. A 
large part of the bodily movement is accomplished thus without 
the intervention of thought or consciousness. 

The well-known experiment with a frog is perhaps the best 
illustration of reflex action. If the hind foot of a decapitated 
frog is pinched, it withdraws the foot from the irritation, the 
sensory nerve transmitting the impulse to the nerve-centre in 
the spinal cord, and the motor nerve to the muscle, thus caus- 
ing the reaction. If the irritation be made greater, the frog 
responds more strongly. This seems strange enough, but if 
the back of the frog be touched with. an acid, it rubs it off with 
the foot on the same side. Cut off this foot and apply acid 
to the same spot — the frog makes an evident effort to use the 
stump of the amputated limb as before, but not succeeding, 
it makes use after some delay of the foot on the other side, 
and succeeds in rubbing it off, thus presenting the appearance 
of deliberative intelligent action. 

The nerve-centres through which personal or psychical action 



24 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

is accomplished are found in the upper or cerebral portion of 
the brain, which in the higher vertebrate animals reaches a 
marked development, attaining in man an enormous propor- 
tional enlargement. 

There are two cerebral hemispheres, connected by the great 
commissure or callosum, and so placed as to have their flat 
faces separated by a vertical partition, which passes from 
front to rear within the skull. They occupy the whole of the 
upper portion of the cranium down as far as the level of the 
eyebrows. Each hemisphere is composed of two substances 
quite different in appearance and structure, — the gray matter 
which is the upper and outer envelope, and the white matter 
which is the interior mass. The gray matter encroaches on 
the white irregularly, and is much corrugated and convoluted, 
the folds at many points extending far down into the white 
matter which supports it. While symmetrical in a general way, 
the convolutions and areas of the two hemispheres by no means 
correspond exactly. The gray matter is a congeries of nerve- 
cells, numbering, according to some estimates, more than a 
thousand millions — connected with each other and with the 
lower brain by a still larger number of nerve-fibres. The white 
matter which underlies the gray is composed essentially of these 
fibres ; some of them connecting the cerebrum or fore-brain 
with the lower portions of the organ, some connecting the 
two hemispheres together, while others connect the different 
divisions of the same hemisphere. The gray matter is not 
found exclusively in the cortex of the hemispheres, but at all 
the levels between the latter and the termination of the spinal 
cord. Between, and occupying a central position with respect 
to the hemispheres, lie two paired masses of gray matter, called 
the optic thalami and the corpora striata, in which a large part 
of the nerve-fibres lose themselves, much as the wires of a 
telephone system converge at the central office. This system 
of the cerebral hemispheres is connected with the cerebellum, 



PSYCHO-MECHANISMS. 2$ 

or hind-brain, and this with the medulla oblongata, which is an 
enlargement of the spinal cord, and so on down to the spinal 
cord itself. It is generally agreed that the reflex or automatic 
movements of the body are chiefly governed by this lower sys- 
tem, including the spinal cord itself. This cord is extremely 
complex, consisting of white and gray matter, but unlike the 
encephalic organs, the bulk of the white is exterior, entirely 
enclosing the gray matter within. 

But there is no need — indeed it is out of the question to go 
into the details of physiology. The nervous system is too 
wonderfully complicated to be understood at a glance, and the 
foregoing sketch as well as what follows, must be taken as true, 
only as a mere outline. The simplicity of statement as to the 
sensory and motor nerves and the whole organism of the brain 
needs many qualifying statements in details, but they would in 
nowise affect our present purpose. 

It is generally conceded that the mechanism which serves 
as the physical basis of conscious sensation is in the gray 
matter of the cerebral hemispheres, though the fact as to 
whether this is exclusively the case, is open to question. No 
one doubts that consciousness has a physical basis, and it is a 
matter of no great moment to the psychologist where, or what 
it is. It is not to be disputed that the cells of the gray matter 
of the cortex of the cerebrum are chiefly concerned in all well- 
defined psychical action, but it is difficult, perhaps impossible 
to find its limits. It seems rather, as has been held, that every 
nervous action affects in greater or less degree the entire 
system, and that there can be no line of separation drawn from 
finger tip to the superior frontal convolution. 

The proofs that the nerve-cells in the gray matter of the 
cerebral hemispheres have chiefly to do with intelligent action 
are sufficiently clear. In the first place, it is found that, in the 
animal kingdom, the gradual development of the mass of this 
matter is fairly parallel with the corresponding rise in the scale 



26 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

of intelligence. The gray matter is found where the lowest 
well-marked volitional power discovers itself, and gains in 
volume and specialization as the power of conscious action 
in the ascending scale of animal life increases, reaching its 
culmination in man. 

But the results of vivisection, carefully and cautiously prac- 
tised upon the lower animals, and of the observations and 
experiments which opportunity has made possible in the human 
brain, all tend to establish the fact. As successive slices of 
the brain-matter are carefully removed from before back- 
wards, an animal becomes more and more stupid, until at last 
all indications of perception and volition are gone. A pigeon 
so mutilated may live for months, but in a profound stupor 
without the slightest heed to what goes on about it. The 
animal still responds in a mechanical way to stimuli, and per- 
forms all the usual reflex adjustments in a sleepy fashion, — 
such as the use of the wings, when thrown into the air; sitting 
on its perch, and all its ordinary bodily movements ; but it 
rarely moves unless stimulated from without. 

Experiments have been made upon reptiles and mammals 
with like results. 

The effects are quite different upon the removal of the cere- 
bellum, or lower part of the brain. With a pigeon, says Pro- 
fessor McKendrick of Glasgow — "If the cerebellum be removed 
gradually by successive slices, there is a progressive effect upon 
locomotive action. On taking away the upper layer there is 
some weakness, and hesitation in gait. When the sections have 
reached the middle of the organ, the animal staggers much, 
and assists itself by its wings in walking. The sections being 
continued further, it is no longer able to. preserve its equilib- 
rium without the assistance of its wings and tail ; its attempts 
to fly or walk resemble the fruitless efforts of a nestling, and 
the slightest touch knocks it over. At last, when the whole 
cerebellum is removed, it cannot support itself even with the 



PSYCHO-MECHANISMS. 27 

aid of its wings and tail ; it makes violent efforts to rise, but 
only rolls up and down ; and then, fatigued with struggling, it 
remains for a few seconds at rest on its back or abdomen, and 
then again commences its vain struggles to rise and walk. Yet 
all the while sight and hearing are perfect. It attempts to 
escape, and appears to have all its sensations perfect. The 
results contrast very strongly with those of removing the cere- 
bral lobes. . . . There is thus a loss of the power of co-ordi- 
nation, or of regulation of movement, without the loss of sen- 
sibility, and hence it has been assumed that in some way or 
other the cerebellum acts as the co-ordinator of movements." 

While the foregoing is undoubtedly true in the main, it must 
be accepted with some degree of caution. There is not a 
little conflicting evidence on the subject. Professor Ladd has 
brought the evidence together very fully in his work on Physi- 
ological Psychology. The specific functions of the cerebellum 
cannot be said to be yet fully determined. No disturbance of 
the sense of sight, hearing, or the muscular sense are certainly 
known to follow injuries to this organ when other parts of the 
brain remain uninjured, and cases are reported in which these 
senses were unimpaired in the total absence of the cerebellum. 
The case of a girl, Alexandrine Labrosse, is reported who was 
found at the autopsy to have had no cerebellum. In its place 
was a mere gelatinous membrane attached to the medulla by 
two peduncles of the same nature ; yet she had no difficulty in 
co-ordinating her movements, and was in full possession of her 
senses. She fell easily, however, and had some difficulties of 
speech. Another case is reported of a man "whose entire 
cerebellum was changed into a brown purulent mass." He 
could walk, but in a tottering way. Another case, a woman 
dying at the age of sixty-nine, was found to have suffered an 
entire atrophy of all the gray substance of the cerebellum ; yet 
she did not lose her muscular vigor, and could co-ordinate all 
her muscles, though her locomotion was disturbed and difficult. 



28 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 



CHAPTER IV. 

psycho-mechanisms {continued) . 

Professor Romanes quoted. Experiments of vivisection. Brain-localiza- 
tions. Electrical stimulations. Rate of nerve-transmission. Time required 
for action of nerve-centres. Rate of nerve-vibrations. The sympathetic 
system. Functions. Independent of volition. Inhibition. Brain-develop- 
ment. Brain-mass. Different nationalities. 

LET us return to the cerebral hemispheres. I make free use 
of the admirable summary given by Professor Romanes in 
his paper already referred to. If the gray matter of one hem- 
isphere be removed, intelligent action is taken away from the 
corresponding (i.e. the opposite) side of the body, while it 
remains intact on the other side. For example, if a dog be 
deprived of one hemisphere, the eye which was supplied from 
it with nerve-fibres continues able to see, or to transmit im- 
pressions to the lower nerve-centre called the optic ganglion ; 
for this eye will then mechanically follow the hand waved in 
front of it. But if the hand should hold a piece of meat, the 
dog will show no mental recognition of the meat, which of 
course it will immediately seize if exposed to the view of the 
other eye. The same thing is found to happen in the case of 
birds : on the injured side sensation, or the power of respond- 
ing to a stimulus, remains intact ; while perception, or the power 
of mental recognition, is destroyed. 

This description applies to the gray matter of the cerebral 
hemispheres as a whole. But of course the question next arises 
whether it only acts as a whole, or whether there is any local- 
ization of different intellectual faculties in different parts of it. 



PSYCHO-MECHANISMS. 2Q 

Now in answer to this question, it has long been known that 
the faculty of speech is definitely localized in a part of the gray 
matter lying just behind the forehead ; for when the part is 
injured, a man loses all power of expressing even the most 
simple ideas in spoken words, while the ideas themselves remain 
as clear as ever. It is remarkable that in each individual, only 
this part of one hemisphere appears to be used ; and there is 
some evidence to show that left-handed persons use the oppo- 
site side from right-handed. Moreover, when the lesion occurs 
in the left hemisphere, either congenitally or during the first 
years of life, the right side apparently takes up the function. 

Within the last few years the important discovery has been 
made, that by stimulating with electricity the surface of the 
gray matter of the hemispheres, muscular movements are 
evoked, and that certain patches of the gray matter, when thus 
stimulated, always throw into action the same groups of mus- 
cles. In other words, there are definite local areas of gray 
matter, which, when stimulated, throw into action definite 
groups of muscles. The available surface of the cerebral 
hemispheres has now been in large measure explored and 
mapped out with reference to these so-called motor-centres ; 
and thus our knowledge of the neuro-muscular machinery of 
the higher animals (including man) has been very greatly 
furthered. 

Here I [Professor Romanes] observe parenthetically that, 
as the brain is insentient to injuries inflicted upon its own sub- 
stance, none of the experiments to which I have alluded entail 
any suffering to the animals experimented upon ; and it is 
evident that the important information which has thus been 
gained could not have been gained by any other method. I 
may also observe that as these motor- centres occur in the gray 
matter of the hemispheres, a strong probability arises that they 
are not only the motor-centres, but also the volitional centres 
which originate the intellectual commands for the contraction 



30 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

of this and that group of muscles. Unfortunately we cannot 
interrogate an animal whether, when we stimulate a motor- 
centre, we arouse in the animal's mind an act of will to throw 
the corresponding group of muscles into action ; but that those 
motor-centres are really centres of volition is pointed to by the 
fact that electrical stimuli have no longer any effect upon them 
when the mental faculties are suspended by anaesthetics, nor in 
the case of young animals when the mental faculties have not 
been sufficiently developed to admit of voluntary co-ordination 
among the muscles which are concerned. On the whole, then, 
it is not improbable that on stimulating artificially these motor- 
centres of the brain, a physiologist is actually playing from 
without, and at his own pleasure, upon the volition of the ani- 
mals. The rate at which molecular movements travel through 
a nerve has been measured, and found to be about 100 feet 
per second, or somewhat more than a mile a minute, in the 
nerves of a frog. In the nerves of a mammal it is about twice 
as fast ; so that if London were connected with New York by 
means of a mammalian nerve, instead of an electric cable, it 
would require nearly a whole day for the message to pass. 

Next, the time has also been measured which is required by 
a nerve-centre to perform its part in a reflex action, when no 
thought or consciousness is involved. This time, in the case 
of the winking reflex, and apart from the time required for the 
passage of the molecular wave up and down the sensory and 
motor nerves, is about -^ of a second. Such is the rate at 
which a nerve-centre conducts its operations when no con- 
sciousness or volition is involved. But when consciousness 
and volition are involved, or when the cerebral hemispheres 
are called into play, the time required is considerably greater. 
For the operations on the part of the hemispheres which are 
comprised in perceiving a simple sensation (such as an elec- 
trical shock) and the volitional act in signalling the perception, 
cannot be performed in less than about yL- of a second, which 



PSYCHO-MECHANISMS. 3 1 

is nearly twice as long as the time required by the lower nerve- 
centres for the performance of a reflex action. Other experi- 
ments prove that the more complex an act of perception, the 
more time is required for its performance. Thus when the 
experiment is made to consist not merely in signalling a per- 
ception, but in signalling one of two or more perceptions (such 
as an electric shock on one or other of the two hands ; which 
of five letters is suddenly exposed to view, etc.), a longer time is 
required for the more complex process in determining which 
of the two or more expected stimuli is perceived, and which 
of the appropriate signals to make in response. The time con- 
sumed by the cerebral hemispheres in meeting a " dilemma " 
of this kind is from \ to ■£$ of a second longer than that which 
they consume in the case of a simpler perception. Therefore, 
whenever mental operations are concerned, a relatively much 
greater time is required for a nerve-centre to perform its 
adjustments than when a merely mechanical or non-mental 
response is needed ; and the more complex the mental opera- 
tion, the more time is necessary. Such may be termed the 
physiology of deliberation. 

So much, then, for the rate at which molecular movements 
travel through the nerves, and the times which the nerve- 
centres consume in performing their molecular adjustments. 
We may next consider the researches which have been very 
recently made upon the rates of these movements themselves, 
or the number of vibrations per second with which the particles 
of nervous matter oscillate. 

If by means of a suitable apparatus, a muscle is made to 
record its own contractions, we find that during all the time it 
is in contraction, it is undergoing a vibratory movement at the 
rate of about nine pulsations per second. What is the mean- 
ing of this movement ? The meaning is that the act of will in 
the brain, which serves as a stimulus to the contraction of the 
muscle, is accompanied by a vibratory movement in the gray 



32 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

matter of the brain; that this movement is going on at the 
rate of nine pulsations per second : and that the muscle is giv- 
ing a separate or distinct contraction in response to every one 
of these nervous pulsations. That such is the true explanation 
of the rhythm in the muscle is proved by the fact, that if in- 
stead of contracting a muscle by an act of the will, it be 
contracted by means of a rapid series of electrical shocks 
playing upon its attached nerve, the record then furnished 
shows a similar trembling going on in the muscle as in the pre- 
vious case ; but the tremors of contraction are now no longer 
at the rate of nine per second : they correspond beat for beat 
with the interruption of the electrical current. That is to say, 
the muscle is responding separately to every separate stimulus 
which it receives through the nerve ; and further experiment 
shows that it is able thus to keep time with the separate shocks, 
even though these be made to follow one another so rapidly as 
iooo per second. Therefore we can have no doubt that the 
slow rhythm of nine per second under the influence of voli- 
tional stimulation, represents the rate at which the muscle is 
receiving so many separate impulses from the brain : the mus- 
cle is keeping time with the molecular vibrations going on in 
the cerebral hemispheres at the rate of nine beats per second. 
Careful tracings show that this rate cannot be increased by 
increasing the strength of the volitional stimulus ; but some 
individuals — and those usually who are of quickest intelli- 
gence — display a somewhat quicker rate of rhythm, which 
may be as high as eleven per second. Moreover, it is found 
that by stimulating by strychnine any of the centres of reflex 
action, pretty nearly the same rate of rhythm is exhibited by 
the muscles thus thrown into contraction ; so that all the nerve- 
cells in the body are thus shown to have in their vibrations 
pretty nearly the same period, and not to be able to vibrate 
with any other. For no matter how rapidly the electric shocks 
are allowed to play upon the gray matter of the cerebral hem- 



PSYCHO-MECHANISMS. 33 

ispheres, as distinguished from the nerve-trunks proceeding 
from them to the muscles, the muscles always show the same 
rhythm of about nine beats per second : the nerve-cells, unlike 
the nerve-fibres, refuse to keep time with the electric shocks, 
and will only respond to them by vibrating at their own intrinsic 
rate of nine beats per second. 

Thus much, then, for the rate of molecular vibration which 
goes on in the nerve-centres. But the rate of such vibration 
which goes on in sensory and motor nerves may be very much 
more rapid. For while a nerve-centre is only able to originate 
a vibration at the rate of about nine beats per second, a motor 
nerve, as we have already seen, is able to transmit a vibration 
of at least iooo beats per second ; and a sensory nerve which 
at the surface of its expansion is able to respond differently to 
differences of musical pitch, of temperature, and even of color, 
is probably able to vibrate very much more rapidly even than 
this. We are not, indeed, entitled to conclude that the nerves 
of special sense vibrate in actual unison, or synchronize, with 
these external sources of stimulation ; but we are, it is thought, 
bound to conclude that they must vibrate in some numerical 
proportion to them (else we should not perceive objective dif- 
ferences in sound, temperature, or color) ; and even this im- 
plies that they are probably able to vibrate at some enormous 
rate. So far Professor Romanes. 

The central nervous system is intimately connected with 
another set of ganglionic centres, and nerve-fibres distributed 
over the different parts of the body, but mutually connected 
with each other, called the sympathetic system. The principal 
centres of this system lie in the abdominal cavity near the 
spine, from which a series of trunks and branches known as 
the " solar plexus " radiate to the muscular walls of the intesti- 
nal canal, and to the various glandular organs connected with 
it. There are two other smaller plexuses, one in connection 
with the heart and great blood-vessels, and the other with the 



34 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

organs of reproduction and other viscera contained in the cavity 
of the pelvis, with smaller ramifications throughout the body. 
The action of this system is almost wholly automatic. It can- 
not be controlled by the will directly at all, but is easily affected 
indirectly by the emotions, particularly in relation to the heart 
and arteries. Everybody knows how easily the heart's move- 
ment is affected by the excitement of pleasure or apprehension, 
and how the blood mounts to the face in blushes or leaves it in 
pallor. All mental states react upon the sympathetic nerves, 
no doubt, so that digestion and health generally depend largely 
upon the cerebro-spinal system in its action upon the sympa- 
thetic. The functions of this system as a rule are performed 
silently and unperceived by consciousness. " The wheels of 
the inner life of the human machine move without noise," and 
only those who have studied the subject, or have been told, 
know anything of the far greater part of the functional action 
of the organs of the body. 

In reflex action there is a distinction to be noted of great 
importance, as we shall see when we come to consider some of 
the phases of psychical phenomena. One class of such auto- 
matic action is wholly beyond the control of the will, and 
another set is directly under the dominion of volition. To the 
first class belong, as already said, all the activities of the sym- 
pathetic system, together with innumerable other mechanical 
functions which are absolutely necessary to life, and so are 
removed from all meddling on the part of the personality. To 
the second class belong many actions which, though in the 
main purely automatic, are yet susceptible of control. For 
example : if the bottom of one's foot be tickled, the reflex 
mechanism withdraws the foot from the irritation, but the will 
can set aside the automatic effort, and refuse to let the move- 
ment take place. This is an inhibition, and those elements of 
the personality whose functions are to overrule positive activi- 
ties are called " inhibitory." These inhibitions probably de- 



PSYCHO-MECHANISMS. 



35 



pend upon mechanisms in the brain, since it is known that the 
removal of the brain is followed by greatly increased activity in 
the reflex centres of the spinal cord. Indeed, pure reflex action 
for the most part occurs only after the removal of the brain 
or in profound sleep. Any reflex movement which had its 
origin in the will can be inhibited, but those which cannot be 
incited by volition cannot be consciously overruled. There has 
been an effort made in these last years to discover a separate 
nerve-apparatus which is concerned in inhibitory action, but the 
existence of such a separate apparatus is not considered as 
established. 

An interesting and important question arises as to the bear- 
ing of brain-development upon intellectual and moral power. 
It has been much discussed, and is still open to constant 
inquiry. There can be no doubt that the brain is the great 
unital mechanism of the human organism, and that its mass 
and specialization are fairly in the ratio of psychical power in 
the ascending scale of animal life. Its development has been 
traced in the utmost detail from the lowest orders in which the 
cerebral vesicles are discoverable up to the fully specialized and 
marvellously complex brain of man. Every step of the way — 
every division of what was single — every folding and tucking 
in, every differentiation, has been made an object of study, and 
it is not to be doubted that the structural brain- evolution is 
fairly parallel with the increase in psychical power of the beings 
whose nervous organisms are dominated by the encephalic 
organ. It would have been more amazing had it not proved 
to be so. As the central organ of a pure mechanism, it would 
have been out of all analogy and all meaning had not the 
mechanism of this organ increased in its specializations as the 
necessity of increased functional activity became necessary. 
As it is, we recognize in man the most marvellous mechanism 
to be found in the whole realm of nature, and in the brain the 
most marvellous contrivance of the Great Mechanician. 



36 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

The weight of the brain-mass has no doubt something to do 
with the character of psychical powers, but this can only be 
affirmed in general terms. It is well known that many idiots 
and persons of low intellectual powers have had brain equal 
in weight to men of highest genius. A better mark, perhaps, 
of high intelligence is to be found in the number and delicacy 
of the convolutions of the cerebral hemispheres ; but even this 
is still in the region of conjecture. It is probable, however, 
that the gray matter of the cerebral hemispheres is the centre 
of the mechanical element of thought, and yet connection of 
thought with the brain, or with the body in any form rests on 
faint sensations of effort, weariness and the like. That there 
is an immense amount of work done by the intercranial organs 
is witnessed to by the fact of the proportionally large amount 
of arterial blood necessary to enable them to fulfil their func- 
tions. The entire encephalic organ weighs only about -^ of 
the body, and yet the amount of blood which it can hold is 
said to be about \ of the whole. 

Comparative anatomy has been busy with the problem as to 
the relative amount of brain-mass in different nationalities, but 
so far the results have not proved conclusive, though the 
opinion is generally held that the average weight in the civil- 
ized races is somewhat greater than that in the savage races. 
The average weight of the brain of an adult male European is 
about 49 ounces, while it is said that the average of the sav- 
ages in Oceanica and Africa falls somewhat below. The brain 
of women is about ten per cent less in weight than that of 
men. A portion of this is doubtless due to the differences 
in the height and weight of the body, and he would be a 
bold man who, in these days, would dare to hint that the mar- 
gin left is not quite made up by other unreckoned factors. 
A large amount of the brain-substance may be lost without 
affecting, so far as can be observed, the intellectual character 
of the patient. 



PSYCHO-MECHANISMS. 37 

The brain attains nearly its full size quite early in life — by the 
age of eight according to accepted authorities, but it is thought 
by later investigators that this period is too short, and should 
be extended to the age of fifteen. It continues, however, to 
increase in weight till 30 or 35 years, or possibly even longer. 
After 60 it begins to diminish in weight. The weights of the 
brains of a number of distinguished men are on record : the 
brain of Cuvier weighed 65.4 oz. ; Dr. Abercrombie's, 63 oz. ; 
Spurzheim's, 55 oz. ■ Louis Agassiz's, 52.7 oz. ; Dr. Chalmers', 
53 oz. ; Webster's, 53.5 oz. ; Thackeray's, 58.5 oz. ; Byron's, 
63 oz. These are all much above the average ; but many men 
of great mental powers have had brains not at all remarkable 
for weight or size ; while the brain weights of many idiots have 
run fairly up to the maximum. 



38 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE SENSES TOUCH, TASTE, AND SMELL. 

The specific senses. Number indefinite. Touch fundamental. Pres- 
sure. End-organs. Threshold value. Weber's and Fechner's law. ' Lo- 
cal signs.' Pressure spots. Temperature spots. End-organs of taste. 
Stimuli. Classification. Sense of smell. End-organs of smell. Stimuli. 
Classification. Muscular sense. End-organs of motion. 

LET us proceed now to look into the marvellous mechanism 
by which the personality is brought in contact with the 
external world. First, we have what are called the * special 
senses ' — that is, the old-time five senses, touch, taste, smell, 
hearing and sight ; but there are vigorous claims on the part 
of physiology for the recognition of a number of other senses 
as specific factors in sense-perception j — notably what is called 
the ' muscular sense ' — the ' temperature sense ' — the ' general 
sense ' {sensus-communis) — the sense of ' pain and pleasure,' 
and the sense of ' innervation and weariness.' Whether all 
these, or any of them, are entitled to rank as distinct senses 
with separate organs, is yet in question. Those investigators 
who hold the negative contend that they are but combinations 
of simple elements or states of consciousness. Leaving this 
question aside let us take up the recognized special senses sep- 
arately, and we shall find as we go where the disputed points 
lie, and what is claimed. 

Since the days of Democritus, Touch has been held to be in 
some sort the fundamental sense. In the light of modern re- 
search this is but confirmed and explained. All the senses, as 
we have seen, are immediately dependent upon motion for their 



THE SENSES TOUCH, TASTE, AND SMELL. 39 

mechanical action ; and since the bodily organs must have mo- 
tion communicated to them by stimuli of one sort or another, 
contact is a fundamental necessity in the establishment of reac- 
tions in the body. But this general sense of mere contact is 
far too wide in its scope to be called touch proper. In point 
of fact, there is no consciousness of contact in any of the senses, 
except in the specific sense which has this for'its characteristic ; 
that is to say, specific Touch is that sense which has for its 
note or mark the consciousness of actual contact from pressure 
or impact. 

What is the physiological solution of this sense of pressure ? 
Is simple contact of any sort, and with any part of the body 
all that is necessary to rouse this sense of touch? By no means. 
Some parts of the body, notably the brain, are wholly insen- 
tient. Even contact with a sensory nerve along the different 
points of its course, usually gives rise to pain which quite ob- 
literates any specific sense of touch. Pressure sensations are 
normally due to the excitation of the end-organs of the sensory 
nerves, which are found in the skin, but distributed by no 
means uniformly in it. 

Histological research is still busy with the general problem 
of the nature and functions of these end-organs. Two classes 
of them are, however, clearly recognized in which the sensory 
nerves terminate in the skin, one called ' end-fibres,' and the 
other ' end-bulbs.' We cannot enter upon the refinements and 
disputes of the many investigators. It is enough for our pur- 
pose to know that the ' end-bulbs ' or ' corpuscles ' of Pacini — 
the first discovered — are minute plum-shaped enlargements at 
the ends of medullated nerves. They are especially in the 
palms of the hands and fingers, in the soles of the feet, the 
toes, and to some extent in the neck, arms and other parts of 
the body. They can sometimes be seen by the naked eye, 
and are from ^ to ^ of an inch long. 

There are a number of other classes of end-bulbs besides 



40 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

these of Pacini far more remote, and of various structures. 
The nerve-fibrils are still more minute and more numerous, 
found in coils, spread out like rootlets, or with hair-like non- 
medullated endings. All these different classes are inter-mixed, 
much more thickly clustered in certain places so that the whole 
skin is thus made the organ of tactual sensibility. The exact 
functions of these several classes of nerve-endings are not yet 
certainly determined. 

Contact sensations are divided into what is called Passive 
Touch and Active Touch. By Passive Touch is meant the 
sensation due to pressure applied to the body with the least 
possible motion of either the part touched or the object touch- 
ing. Now it is found that not all pressure so applied is dis- 
coverable in consciousness. The pressure must reach a certain 
intensity, varying for different parts of the body, before it is 
discovered by the person touched. The least degree of pres- 
sure which can be felt is called the ' threshold value ' ; as though 
consciousness were an open door, and sensation had to rise to 
a certain height before it could flow in. 

Investigators tell us that the least weight which can be felt 
on the forehead, temples and back of the hand is 0.002 gramme ; 
in the nose, lips, chin, etc., 0.005 > m tne s ^ m °f tne nee ^ l 
gramme. 

But it is found that not every change in the degree of pres- 
sure is discoverable in sensation. Sensations, even of the same 
kind, do not always shade into each other. They appear to go 
per saltum. For example, if a weight of three ounces be 
placed upon a sensitive portion of the hand, or applied as a 
pressure, and it be increased to Sj^-q, the patient cannot dis- 
cover that there has been any change. It may be increased to 
3tt> to 35 l -, and still sensation will not so change as to be dis- 
coverable in consciousness ; but when it reaches about 3 ¥ 1 - - the 
difference is felt at once. This ratio 3 to 3 ¥ l u - is approximately 
constant for passive touch with this weight, but varies consider- 



THE SENSES TOUCH, TASTE, AND SMELL. 4I 

ably when much larger or smaller weights are used. This dif- 
ference which is necessary to produce a change in sensation is 
called the ' difference threshold,' and for passive touch, is about 
as 3 to 3^ under the conditions given above. 

It is thought by physiologists that something like this relation 
runs through all the senses, the ratio being different for the 
several senses and varying according to the intensity of the 
stimuli. There are difficulties in the way of determining what 
these several ratios are in some of the senses, from certain fluc- 
tuations not accounted for; but there is sufficient ground to 
think that the main fact nevertheless obtains. The principle is 
known as ' Weber's Law ' and may be enunciated thus : the 
difference between any two stimuli must attain a constant ratio 
to produce successive equal steps in sensation — i.e. if sensa- 
tion increases in an arithmetical ratio, the stimuli must increase 
in a geometrical ratio. This is also known in this modified 
form as Fechner's Law ; who, however, states it in a more pre- 
cise mathematical way : the intensity of sensation varies with 
the logarithm of the stimulus. 

But not only do we distinguish sensations of touch as differ- 
ing in intensity, but also as having place in the body. This fact 
of localizing stimuli is also quite marked in sight, and in less 
degree in hearing. There is considerable difference of opinion 
as to how this comes about, but the fact is not disputed. 

It is plain that if a sensation, as of ' red ' were confined to 
the nerve-sense of 'redness ' there could be no objective mean- 
ing in it ; but we not only have the sensation of color, but of 
color localized somewhere. So in touch : if we simply felt 
pressure in a general way, we should not know whether it were 
hand or foot which is pressed. This has nothing primarily to 
do with the question as to how we learn to localize sensations ; 
but simply with the fundamental differences in sensation through 
which it becomes possible even to learn place-quality in sensation. 

The theory which meets most favor is that of ( local signs ' 



42 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

proposed by Lotze. It is briefly, that with the sensation proper, 
there comes to consciousness through the organ of sense, a 
somewhat which serves to distinguish the sensation as due to 
a stimulus emanating from a definite place in space, and which 
he calls its ' local sign.' What the mechanical basis of these 
local signs may be is still open to question. 

The sense of locality in the skin varies greatly in different 
areas. The discriminative sensibility in the skin has been care- 
fully studied, the first work in this direction having been done 
by E. H. Weber. He used a pair of dividers, the blunted 
points of which were brought in contact with the skin, and the 
least distance apart of these points, which produced two dis- 
tinct sensations, was taken as the measure of sensitiveness of the 
area. The tip of the tongue is found to be most sensitive, the 
two points being distinguishable as distinct when only about 
0.04 of an inch apart. The points of the fingers come next, the 
distance being about twice as great ; the inner or red part of 
the lips, a fifth of an inch ; and so increasing in distance until 
in the middle of the back, the upper arm and leg, the distance 
has to be about two inches and a half. 

Later investigators have established the fact that there are 
great individual differences in this discrimination of two points, 
some persons not being more than one-fourth as sensitive as 
others, though the relative acuteness for different parts of the 
body remains substantially the same. It is also found that the 
delicacy of discrimination is susceptible of very considerable, 
and even rapid cultivation, especially in certain areas of the 
body, notably the fingers. 

These conclusions of Weber and his immediate followers 
have been greatly modified by the later studies of physiologists, 
especially Goldscheider. They discover what are called ' pres- 
sure spots.' Between these it is impossible to excite the sen- 
sation of pressure at all. There is sensation indeed, but dull, 
indefinable and expressionless. 



THE SENSES TOUCH, TASTE, AND SMELL. 43 

The discriminating sensibility of touch is greatly augmented 
by movement, or successive changes. The threshold value 
and the difference threshold are much more refined, but the 
same constancy of ratios is maintained. It is thought that the 
experiments by Weber, while revealing what is quite true with 
regard to the skin, and its reaction practically, were not con- 
ducted with sufficient nicety to distinguish between a number 
of factors involved in his experiments. 

It will be as well to mention here, while speaking of the skin 
and its functions, the remarkable discoveries with regard to the 
sensation of temperature. It may be now considered as estab- 
lished that only certain definite points of the skin are sensitive 
to heat and cold ; and what is more astonishing, these points 
seem to be distinct ; that is to say, the { heat-spots ' are not 
sensitive to cold, nor are the ' cold-spots ' to heat. What is 
more, these spots are insensible to pain — even the pain which 
results from heat and cold. They may be pierced by a needle 
without sensation. In the words of Professor Ladd : " By 
using a machine which locates the stimulus microscopically, the 
topography of the skin may be mapped out, and extremely 
minute spots indicated which respond to irritation with sensa- 
tions of pain, of pressure, of cold and heat, respectively. 

" These different kinds of sensation spots appear never to be 
superposed ; nor are they located alike on the symmetrical 
parts of the same individual, or on the corresponding parts of 
different individuals. . . . 

"Heat-spots are on the whole less abundant than cold- 
spots ; but in parts of the body where the skin is most sensitive 
to either heat or cold, the corresponding class of spots is rela- 
tively frequent. Temperature spots may be divided into first- 
class and second-class (so Goldscheider) — according to the 
strength with which they react on- moderate stimulation. Some 
spots are roused only by excessive temperatures. The same 
object feels cool to one spot, ice-cold to another." 



44 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

While not yet fully established, the reasons for considering 
temperature to be a specific sense with its own special nerves 
and end-organs are very strong. Just what these end-organs 
are is not yet certain. They are quite distinct from those which 
give rise to pain, since they may be in full possession of their 
sensibility, while those which give rise to pain in the same area 
are rendered insentient. Cocaine, which renders an area to 
which it is applied insensible to pain, leaves the sensation of 
temperature unaffected. 

The end-organs of taste are placed at the entrance of the 
alimentary canal, and are probably confined to the upper sur- 
face of the back part of the tongue, the edges and the tip of 
the tongue, and the front part of the soft palate, though some 
physiologists claim that there are other areas susceptible to 
taste stimulation. The middle of the tongue and the surface 
of the hard palate are insensible to taste stimuli. What this 
stimulus is, nobody knows. Histologists, however, are sub- 
stantially agreed as to the structure and disposition of the end- 
organs themselves. They are found in the papillae of the taste 
areas, and are flask-shaped with a short neck which is towards 
the outer surface. They are very minute, imbedded in the 
mucous membrane, surrounded by epithelial cells, the opening 
or pore being from twelve-hundredths to four-thousandths of an 
inch in diameter. They are called ' gustatory- flasks ' or ' taste- 
bulbs ' or ' knobs ' and are quite complex, each bulb being 
composed of from fifteen to thirty long, slender cells curving in 
at the top like the petals of a bud. 

Only liquid bodies, or such as are in some measure* soluble, 
act as stimuli to these end- organs, and not even all such bodies 
have taste. As to whether gases have taste or not may be 
considered an open question inclining to the negative. 

A number of investigators hold that the sense can be 
excited by mechanical means ; as for example, that pressure on 
the back part of the tongue will produce a bitter, and tapping 



THE SENSES — TOUCH, TASTE, AND SMELL. 45 

gently and repeatedly on the tip, a saltish sensation. This 
latter effect can be easily verified and seems to be as claimed. 
Heat is not a stimulus, but after much debate it is now estab- 
lished that electricity is. If the cathode is placed upon the 
upper surface of the end of the tongue a sensation described 
as sourish-metallic, bitterish-metallic, etc., is said to be pro- 
duced, while the anode in the same spot produces a somewhat 
similar but distinguishable taste. Rosenthal, as Professor 
Ladd states, finds that " when a chain of four persons is ar- 
ranged in such manner as to send a current of electricity 
through the tongue of one, the eyeball of another, and the 
muscles of a frog-preparation held by two of the four, the 
same current will cause simultaneously an acid taste, a flash of 
light, and a movement of the animal's muscles." 

It is impossible to make any scientific classification of the 
different kinds of tastes. The general rough classification is 
into sweet, sour, salt, and bitter. The sense of smell enters so 
largely into many shades of taste, that it is often difficult to say 
offhand to which sense a dominant quality is due. The 
muscular sense is also often involved. Intense stimulation of 
the taste-organs excites marked effects in the muscular system. 
The sympathetic nerves also are often involved, as for example, 
in nausea. Pungent, alkaline, astringent, and metallic tastes 
are held to be combinations, and generally flavors of bodies 
are complex. The sense varies through a considerable range 
in different persons, and is susceptible of a high degree of cul- 
tivation. Astonishing stories are told of the power of profes- 
sional tastes, as of tea, liquors, etc., to discriminate nice shades 
of excellence and detect foreign substances. 

The sense of smell is physiologically the least known of all 
the senses. The end-organs are found in the mucous mem- 
brane of the upper region of the nasal cavity and guard the 
opening of the respiratory tract. The olfactory region {regio 
olfactoria) has a thicker mucous membrane than the lower 



46 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

region (regio respiratoria) of the cavity. It is of a yellow or 
brownish-red character and in it are the olfactory cells. The 
cells are long, narrow, and spindle-shaped. 

Only substances in a gaseous or volatilized state can stimu- 
late the organs of smell, and even then the conditions must be 
favorable. The nostrils may be filled with any odorous parti- 
cles, as eau de Cologne or sulphuretted hydrogen, without any 
sense of odor if there is no movement of the particles, and 
even then the movement must be inspiratory, or from without 
into the lungs. In the contrary movement of the gas or vapor, 
that is, in the expiratory movements of the lungs, there is no 
action on the part of these organs. 

Thermal excitations do not give rise to smell, and the cur- 
rent opinion is that the sense cannot be produced by electrical 
or mechanical means, but the matter is by no means settled. 

The degree of fineness of odoriferous particles is wonderful. 
If the air bearing an odor be filtered through a tube filled with 
cotton wool, and inserted in the nose, the smell is still discov- 
erable. It is said that by this means organisms which cause 
putrefaction and fermentation of I - c ~r"o ; "ro °f an * ncn m diame- 
ter are removed. A grain of musk will scent a room for years, 
and yet at the expiration of that time no discoverable diminu- 
tion of weight can be detected. One part of sulphuretted 
hydrogen in a million parts of air can be distinguished. 

There is every reason to believe that the lower animals have 
a power of smell far beyond that possessed by man in his nor- 
mal state. The dog and cat are especially furnished with in- 
formation through this sense. There is a case on record of a 
boy — James Mitchell — born blind, deaf, and dumb, who could 
at once distinguish a stranger by this sense, and recognized his 
acquaintances by their distinguishing odors, and as we shall 
see, hypnotic patients seem to possess a power of smell which 
is marvellous. 

The classifications of odors have no scientific basis. The 



THE SENSES TOUCH, TASTE, AND SMELL. 47 

same substance gives rise to different odors, to different persons, 
or, if the odors remain the same, their agreeable, or offensive 
character differs widely, not only in different people but with 
the same person at different times. Certain effects, commonly 
accounted smells, do not properly belong to this sense ; such 
as those called pungent, sharp, and irritating. It is claimed by 
some that even an acid has no smell proper, but that its action 
is due to mechanic irritation. 

The first effect of smell is strongest. The first sniff of a rose 
is sweetest and most intense ; after being inhaled for a moment 
the scent appears to die away. This may be due, it has been 
suggested, to a rapid coating of the olfactory membrane, but is 
more probably a subjective effect. It is thought that 'odors 
of animal effluvia are of a higher specific gravity than the air, 
and do not readily diffuse, — a fact which may account for the 
pointer and bloodhound keeping their noses to the ground.' 



MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE SENSE OF HEARING. 

The ear. Structure. Corti's organ. Theories. Physical basis of 
sound. Intensity, pitch, quality. Illustrations. Partials. Tyndall quoted. 
Difference in people's sensibility. Powers of discrimination. Range. The 
human voice. 

THE organ of hearing, the ear, is an extremely complex 
mechanism. It consists of an external, a middle and 
an inner ear. The functions of the external ear, — consisting 
of the auricle or convoluted cartilage at the side of the head, 
and the crooked tubular passage {external meatus) do not 
seem to be important except for admitting vibrations of the 
air to the mechanism within. The external cavity may be en- 
tirely filled with wax or tallow, and, if a passage by a tube be 
left to the middle ear, sounds are rather more distinctly heard ; 
though it is thought that certain minor modifications of tones 
are affected through the external apparatus. The external mea- 
tus is a perfect protection to the ear drum, being a passage one 
and a quarter inches long, and somewhat bent downwards and 
backwards. 

The tympanum, or drum or middle ear, is a chamber irregu- 
lar in form, across which is stretched the tympanic membrane 
— itself complex, consisting of three distinct layers. Immedi- 
ately behind this membrane are three small, curiously shaped 
bones called the hammer, the anvil and the stirrup stretching 
across the cavity from the tympanic membrane to the inner 
wall. The handle of the hammer (ma/Zeus) is connected with 
the middle of the tympanic membrane, and its head fits into a 



THE SENSE OF HEARING. 49 

cavity of the anvil (incus) and has a delicate articulatory move- 
ment with it. One of the two processes of the incus ends in 
a rounded head and articulates with the stapes or stirrup. At 
its interior wall the middle ear opens into the Eustachian tube, 
a canal communicating with the nasal compartment of the 
pharynx. The office of the middle ear seems to be chiefly to 
transmit vibrations to the inner ear, though doubtless it per- 
forms important modifying functions not yet fully understood. 

The internal ear, called also the labyrinth from its com- 
plexity, is the part of the auditory apparatus in which the true 
end- organs of hearing are placed. Without attempting to enter 
upon details it must suffice to say that it consists of three parts 
known as the vestibule, the semicircular canals, and the coch- 
lea. Of these the cochlea is by far the most complex. The 
osseous cochlea is a tube wound two and three-quarters times 
round a pillar as an axis, like the shell of a snail, both pillar 
and tube diminishing rapidly in diameter from base to apex. 
The enclosed membranous mechanism here is marvellous in 
the extreme ; but we pass on to the remarkable arrangement 
of cells discovered by the Marchese Corti, and so called the 
organ of Corti. It is a membrane composed in part of fibres 
which are stretched at right angles to the longer axis, i.e. radi- 
ally. This membrane is furnished with 10,500 'rods ' or ' pil- 
lars of Corti,' arranged in an inner and outer row and increasing 
in length from the base to the apex of the cochlea. Each set 
of rods has a row of hair-cells so-called nearly parallel with it, 
and these are covered with a delicate perforated membrane. 
The hair-cells communicate with the auditory nerve and so 
with the brain. 

There is considerable obscurity yet, as to the exact action 
of this auditory apparatus, but there is little doubt that it is 
purely mechanical. At one time Helmholtz thought that the 
rods of Corti responded to the vibrations communicated to 
them, such vibrations throwing into action those fibres which 



50 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

were in sympathetic accord ; and since the estimated number 
of these would allow thirty-three filaments for each semitone 
through the whole range of audition, there would be nearly 
enough to answer to every shade of tone ■ but even if the 
number fell short, it was shown that nicer shades were possible 
by the composite action of the two filaments between which 
the sound might fall. Recent histological researches, however, 
have led to some modifications of this theory, especially as it 
is found that there are no rods of Corti in the cochlea of birds, 
and it can hardly be doubted that they have an appreciation 
of pitch. " Hensen and Helmholtz have now suggested the view 
that not only may the segments of the ' membrana basilaris ' 
be stretched more in the radial than in the longitudinal direc- 
tion, but different segments may be stretched radially with 
different degrees of tension, so as to resemble a series of tense 
strings of gradually increasing length. Each string would then 
resound to a vibration of a particular pitch communicated to 
it. The exact mechanism of the hair-cells, and of the mem- 
brana reticularis, which looks like a damping apparatus, is 
unknown." 

Sounds may be divided into two classes, noises and musical 
tones. Whether there are separate end-organs through which 
these two classes are conveyed to the brain-cells is not defi- 
nitely known ; but, however this may be, it is certain that the 
stimuli in either class is motion which causes the air to be 
thrown into agitation, or tremor, as by a blow or oscillation 
of some external body. The fact that there is no discoverable 
relation between the power of distinguishing noises and of 
appreciating musical tones, gives plausibility to the theory that 
they are due to distinct mechanisms in the nerve- endings. 
The two classes are clearly distinguished mechanically at all 
events. In tones there is found to be regular recurrent motion, 
the period or time of the recurrence being uniform, and so 
called periodic. In noises there is an absence of this element, 



THE SENSE OF HEARING. 5 1 

but instead, confusion and lack of uniformity. Noises, how- 
ever, can be detected in almost all musical tones, as the scrap- 
ing of the bow in the violin, the whir of the air in the flute, 
and the rattle of action and strings in the piano. So also in 
noises, tones can almost always be detected by a trained ear, 
as in the ring of a hammer, the creaking wheels, and the 
resonance of an explosion. 

Any regular recurrent motion gives rise to a tone. A suf- 
ficient illustration, though not the most perfect, is found in 
Savart's machine, which is simply a toothed wheel, the teeth 
striking upon a bit of card-board in the revolution of the wheel. 
When the wheel moves slowly so that the taps reach, say, 40 
or 50 in a second, a very low tone is produced, and as the 
velocity is increased the tone runs up till it reaches the highest 
pitch. This machine presents the mechanical action most per- 
fectly to the eye, but the ' Siren,' which simply makes and 
breaks a current of air, is far more perfect. 

The Science of Acoustics has for its object the development 
of the mechanical phenomena of periodic motion in sound, and 
the mathematicians have given a very complete analysis of the 
whole subject. We are compelled to content ourselves with a 
brief outline. 

A body under a central or directed force must move accord- 
ing to the t laws of mechanics, in one or other of the class of 
curves known as conies, so called because they may all be cut 
from the surface of a cone by a plane. Gravitation is such a 
force, and the motions of the bodies of the solar system are 
examples of periodic motion. A common pendulum is the 
simplest exemplification of such motion. Galileo discovered 
from a swinging lamp in a church, it is said, that, although the 
arc through which the pendulum swings gradually loses in 
length on account of the resistance of the atmosphere and 
friction, the beat or time of the swing remains constant. So in 
all periodic motion, the time in which an excursion is made 



52 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

is entirely independent of the amplitude, or extent, of the path. 
This principle lies at the bottom of all sustained or musical 
tones. 

Now elasticity, or the energy of restitution when a particle 
is disturbed in an elastic medium, is a directed force, and 
for small distances this law of periodic motion holds for all 
oscillations. A displaced particle is driven back by this force 
of restitution, but by virtue of the kinetic energy generated in 
its return, it passes its original place of rest, and swings to the 
other side, and so back and forth, until the moving energy is 
exhausted, but taking just as long a time to make its final and 
least movement as it did for the first and greatest. This swing 
or pendulous motion (called vibration) in conic curves (a 
straight line is a particular case of an ellipse) is the mechanical 
basis of the undulatory or wave theory of sound, light, heat, 
and, we may say, of all physical phenomena. 

To affect the ear, the air, which is an elastic medium, must 
be thrown into a state of agitation, and the impact of the air 
particles upon the tympanic membrane causes it to vibrate, 
and these vibrations are transmitted through the wonderful 
mechanisms of the ear until they finally reach the end-organs 
of the auditory nerve, and are thence conveyed by nerve-fibres 
to the brain. 

Now the elementary motions, or excursions of the molecules 
which, transmitted, give rise to a pulse or wave, are performed 
in a very small space. These minute motions are characterized 
by three distinct variations with respect to the path or orbit 
over which they move. First, the orbit may be large or small. 
If large, the velocity, and consequently the moving energy, 
must be great compared with a smaller path and slower motion, 
the time being constant. This causes the impact or blow on 
the tympanic membrane to be greater for large orbits than for 
small : that is, the loudness or intensity of sound depends upon 
the amplitude of the impinging air particles. 



THE SENSE OF HEARING. 53 

The second variation is in time. The orbital or periodic 
times of the moving molecules may be greater or less according 
to the rapidity of movement of the body which gives rise to the 
vibrations. The greater the number of vibrations in any given 
time, as a second, the higher or sharper the tone. This is what 
is called ' pitch.' The lower limit, or gravest sound audible to 
most ears, is about 30 vibrations to the second : the upper 
limit, or most acute sound, has about 30,000 to the second. 

The third variation is in the form of the path in which the 
molecules move. If a pendulum formed of a cord and weight 
attached be started to vibrate, the time of vibration will remain 
constant so long as the length of the cord is unchanged, though 
the pendulum bob be made to describe any sort of figure (as 
it would be seen from above), as for example a straight line, an 
ellipse, or a figure eight. There may be any number of small 
motions superposed upon the main path, like the motions of 
the moon, which, while moving around the sun, has at the same 
time, a motion around the earth, as well as divers other minute 
perturbations. This variation in the form of the path gives rise 
to what is called ' character,' ' timbre,' ' klang,' or quality of 
tone. 

To illustrate : if a tuning-fork on its stand be struck, the 
rapidity of movement of the two prongs will always be the 
same for the same fork, whether the blow be soft or hard. 
This gives the same time for excursions of the air particles, and 
so the ' pitch ' and the ' timbre ' remain constant for that par- 
ticular fork. Hence it is that tuning-forks have to be selected 
for the particular pitch, or note, they are desired to give. But 
if the same fork be struck softly, and then with greater force, 
there is a marked difference in the intensity of the sound. 
The swing of the prongs is greater, and the excursions of the 
air particles are of greater amplitude, so that the effect on the 
ear is to give greater loudness for the heavy stroke than for 
the soft one ; that is, the ' intensity ' differs for the two notes. 



54 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

Again, if two different tuning-forks are making, .one 528 
vibrations in a second, and the other 792, the first will be 
middle C and the second G above, and almost any ear will 
discover that the first is more grave than the other. This is 
a difference in ' pitch.' 

Once more, if a particular note, as middle C, be sounded on 
two different kinds of instruments, as a flute and a clarionet, or 
a violin and a piano, although they may be exactly the same 
pitch and loudness, they are easily distinguishable. This is 
called ' timbre ' or ' quality.' It is due to the difference in the 
form of the path in which the excursion of the air particles is 
performed ; and this difference is caused by superposed move- 
ments upon the elementary path, called ' overtones ' or ' par- 
tials ' : that is to say, along* with the principle tone there are 
other tones sounding at the same time, and it is hardly possible 
to get a tone perfectly simple or free from these riders ; which 
are also called l harmonics.' When a note is most nearly 
simple it is thin, meagre, and insipid. The lower harmonics 
give to the fundamental tone richness and fulness, while the 
higher give brilliancy and thrill. 

The manner in which bodies break up into multiform vibrat- 
ing segments cannot be better illustrated, perhaps, than by the 
following extract from one of Dr. Tyndall's lectures on sound. 
He says: "We are now prepared to appreciate an extremely 
beautiful experiment, for which we are indebted to Professor 
Wheatstone, and which I am now able to make before you. 
In a room underneath this, and separated from it by two floors, 
is a piano. Through the two floors passes a tin tube 2\ inches 
in diameter, and along the axis of this tube passes a rod of 
deal, the end of which emerges from the floor in front of the 
lecture table. The rod is clasped by india-rubber bands, which 
entirely close the tin tube. The lower end of the rod rests 
upon the sound-board of the piano, its upper end being exposed 
before you. An artist is at this moment engaged at the instru- 



THE SENSE OF HEARING. 55 

ment, but you hear no sound. I place this violin upon the end 
of the rod ; the violin becomes instantly musical, not, however, 
with the vibrations of its own strings but with those of the 
piano. I remove the violin, the sound ceases ; I put in its 
place a guitar, and the music revives. For the violin and 
guitar I substitute this plain wooden tray ; it is also rendered 
musical. Here, finally, is a harp, against the sound-board of 
which I cause the end of the deal rod to press ; every note of 
the piano is reproduced before you. I lift the harp so as to 
break its connection with the piano, the sound vanishes ; but 
the moment I cause the sound-board to press upon the rod, 
the music is restored. The sound of the piano so far resembles 
that of the harp that it is hard to resist the impression that the 
music you hear is that of the latter instrument. An uneducated 
person might well believe that witchcraft is concerned in the 
production of this music. 

" What a curious transference of action is here presented to 
the mind ! At the command of the musician's will his fingers 
strike the keys ; the hammers strike the strings, by which the 
rude mechanical shock is shivered into tremors. The vibra- 
tions are communicated to the sound-board of the piano. 
Upon that board rests the end of the deal rod, thinned off to 
a sharp edge to make it fit more easily between the wires. 
Through this edge, and afterwards along the rod, are poured 
with unfailing precision the entangled pulsations produced by 
the shocks of those ten agile fingers. To the sound-board of 
the harp before you the rod faithfully delivers up the vibrations 
of which it is the vehicle. This sound-board transfers the 
motion to the air, curving it and chasing it into forms so trans- 
cendently complicated that confusion alone could be antici- 
pated from the shocks and jostle of the sonorous waves. But 
the marvellous human ear accepts every feature of the motion ; 
and all the strife and struggle and confusion melt finally into 
music upon the brain." 



56 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

There is a marked difference in the sensibility of different 
people to sounds, although they may have what is called perfect 
hearing. This is especially true in the higher range. When 
the test is made, certain people are surprised to find that their 
ears fail to respond to tones which are distinctly heard by 
others not supposed to be any better. What the range is in 
the lower animal kingdom cannot be satisfactorily ascertained, 
but there seems to be good reason for supposing that there 
may be a whole world of sound, especially for insects, which 
we count silence. 

The niceness of discrimination in the differences of tone in a 
practised ear is amazing. Some musicians can detect about the 
•J- of a vibration ; and on the other hand, it is not uncommon 
to find people who cannot distinguish semitones, or even tones. 
When a note has a number of vibrations exactly double that of 
another, the second is said to be the octave of the first ; and if 
the number of vibrations in this last be doubled again it is the 
second octave ; and so on up. The range of the ear is about 
eleven octaves. A note and its octave have such extraordinary 
likeness to each other that if not sounded in pretty quick suc- 
cession many, even cultivated ears, fail to detect the difference ; 
and the explanation of the likeness in a psychical point of view 
is difficult if not impossible. A man and a woman singing the 
same note in accord seem, to most persons, to be using the 
same pitch, when in reality they are commonly an octave apart. 
There are, however, some women's voices pitched as low as a 
man's. Few persons have any notion of ' absolute pitch,' that 
is, have the power to tell the pitch of a note sounded apart 
from any note of known pitch, sounding at or near the same 
time. It is said that this gift is not possessed by more than 
one in a hundred, while perhaps about the same ratio of people 
have no notion of differences in pitch under any circumstances. 
Such people are music-deaf as some are color-blind. 

The complete range of sounds for musical purposes is reck- 



THE SENSE OF HEARING. 57 

oned at about nine octaves, though something must be cut off 
the top and bottom for all practical purposes, making the effec- 
tive range between six and seven octaves ; or, in vibrations, 
between 40 and 4000 to the second. Organ pipes are actually 
made to embrace this entire interval, that is to say, from two 
octaves below the lowest note of a bass voice, to about three 
octaves above C in alt. This gives a difference in length of 
pipe from J of an inch to 32 feet : but an air played in the 
lowest or highest octave can scarcely if at all be recognized. 

Without going into detail, there are six notes in the diatonic 
scale interpolated between each two octaves with somewhat 
varying intervals. The intervals between the several notes 
expressed in the relative number of vibrations are in the scale 
of C proximately f , f , f , f , f , J£. 

In man the voice is due to the vocal organ which is placed at 
the top of the windpipe, the extremity of which is almost closed 
by two elastic membranes, called the vocal cords. These are 
caused to vibrate by the passage of air from the lungs through 
the trachea or windpipe, and are made to vary in tension, by a 
wonderful muscular arrangement, so as to cover a large range 
in pitch and intensity. Suppose two india-rubber bands to be 
stretched over the mouth of a fairly large glass tube, leaving a 
slit between them, and air to be forced through this slit. These 
edges would be thrown into vibrations of greater or less rapidity 
according to the tension. This is very like the action of the 
vocal cords, only remembering that this tension is regulated 
by one at will. The sweetness and firmness of voice is deter- 
mined by the smoothness and evenness of the edges of this 
slit in the glottis, and the accuracy with which they fit together 
at regular intervals in opening and closing. If the edges are 
jagged, or strike each other in vibrating, the voice is harsh, or 
husky. The excellence of the organ will depend upon the 
rapidity and certainty with which the cords can be stretched 
or relaxed, the opening enlarged and contracted, and especially 



58 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

upon the form of the cavity of the mouth for sustaining and 
re-enforcing the sounds which proceed from the glottis. 

In men, by the development of the larynx, the vocal cords 
become much elongated, as compared with those of women, 
the ratio being as 3 to 2, so that the male voice is lower in 
pitch and stronger and fuller. A rapid change takes place in the 
development of the cords in boys at the age of puberty : they 
become for a time uncertain and squeaky, and generally fall an 
octave in pitch. There is a considerable increase of the glottis 
of the girl also, but only about one-half that of the boy, and 
the voice does not change. In advanced life, or by disease, 
decided changes take place in the physical conditions of the 
vocal organs, with a consequent change in voice ; but a great 
deal of the change in most people's voices is due to a lack of 
attention or care in keeping the vocal cords up to their work. 

The range of the human voice is quite variable. The ordi- 
nary register is about two octaves, but certain rare voices have 
a range of three and a half. An extraordinary case is recorded 
upon the authority of Mozart — that of Lucrezia Ajugari, who 
gave purely the third octave above middle C, while she trilled 
freely on the re below. Hers was the most remarkable high- 
pitched voice ever known, — an octave and a half above the 
ordinary soprano. A basso named Gaspard Forster passed 
from the fa of the third octave below middle C to la above, 
the lower end of his register being a full octave below that of 
the ordinary bass. 

Helmholtz has shown that the conformation of the cavity of 
the mouth acts as a resonator, and so has very much to do 
with the volume and elasticity of the voice, and the original 
structure of the whole vocal apparatus determines the power 
and smoothness of one's vocalization in speech and song • but 
a large margin is still left in which one's own effort can modify 
favorably or the reverse ; and commonly, in this country, it is 
for the worse. We may as well confess that the American 



THE SENSE OF HEARING. 59 

voice, in speech, as a rule, is the worst in the world. The one 
wretched fault is nasality. This is not the work of nature, but 
is the result of volitional neglect, or falsely directed effort. 
There is scarcely one person in a hundred in this country who 
has not made his or her voice thin and nasal, by not using the 
right muscles in regulating the tension of the vocal cords, 
driving out of the voice the lower overtones which give it rich- 
ness, volume, and fulness. 



60 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE SENSE OF VISION. 

Mechanism of the eye. Structure of retina. End-organs. Rods and 
cones. Mechanical basis of vision. Color. ' Consecutive ' images. Tone, 
intensity, saturation. Yellow spot. 

THE eye is, if possible, more wonderful in its mechanism 
than the ear. It is primarily a complete optical instru- 
ment, and, as such, sufficiently wonderful ; but the refinement 
of mechanical contrivance is found, not in the optical arrange- 
ment but in the preparation of light, by the end-organs in the 
retina to be transmitted to the brain. 

In the optical arrangement of the instrument there are the 
following transparent media — the ' cornea,' the ' aqueous 
humor,' the ' crystalline lens,' and the 'vitreous humor.' The 
cornea is the outer, horny covering of the eyeball which is 
transparent, and the outer and inner surfaces being parallel, it 
exerts no effect in refracting or bending the rays of light. All 
the other media do exert such power; but by far the most 
considerable effect in this way is produced by the ' crystalline 
lens.' This is placed just behind the diaphragm of the iris 
which automatically regulates the admission of light by enlarg- 
ing or contracting the pupil. The crystalline is a bi-convex 
lens with its axis on a line with the centre of the pupil, and 
covering in extent the pupil and iris. Its front surface is not 
so much curved as the posterior surface, and by the arrange- 
ment of certain delicate muscles, the front surface is made to 
bow more or less in order to accommodate the eye to the rays of 
light from objects at different distances. The posterior surface 



THE SENSE OF VISION. 6l 

remains fixed in curvature. It is not homogeneous in structure, 
but composed of layers like an onion. This is an arrangement 
of Nature to correct for chromatic and spherical aberration. 

From the cornea to the posterior surface of the lens the dis- 
tance is about one-third of the optical axis. All the remaining 
portion of the interior of the eyeball is filled with the ' vitreous 
humor/ which is as translucent as glass, and jelly-like in con- 
sistency. It does not seem to have any very great significance 
physiologically or optically, but to be intended rather to hold 
everything compact within the eyeball. 

Next the vitreous humor comes the ' retina,' which lines the 
whole of the back part of the eyeball, extending about two-thirds 
of the way towards the front. Behind the retina comes the ' cho- 
roid coat' which is the middle one of the three .envelopes, or 
tunics, of the eyeball. It is quite dark, inclining to black, and 
extends far forward, joining on to the iris in front. It is abun- 
dantly supplied with blood-vessels and nerves. In Albinos, and 
in many mammals also, it contains no pigment, though the 
structure is the same • which gives their eyes a peculiar irides- 
cent lustre. In the horse, and in ruminant animals this lustre 
of the eye is also seen, but it is due to the reflection of bundles 
of tissue. In cats it is due, according to Schultze, to cells contain- 
ing double refractory crystals. When this coat is dark a part of 
the light which enters the eye is absorbed, and the pupil is black. 

It has been suggested that in those animals presenting an 
iridescence the eye is probably more sensitive to light of feeble 
intensity. The iris, which is really a continuation of the cho- 
roid coat, is too well known to require description. 

Outside of all is the l sclerotic coat,' which with the cornea 
forms a complete protective covering of the entire instrument, 
except where it is pierced by the optic nerve, shortly to be 
noticed. It is a firm, unyielding, fibrous membrane, white, 
except the cornea, which is transparent. To it are attached 
the muscles for the movement of the eyeball. 



62 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

There are many accessory arrangements of the most delicate 
nature for the protection and management of the eye, such as 
eyelids, eyebrows, lachrymal apparatus, etc., which in this 
mere outline we need not stop to consider. To understand 
the eye in its marvellous perfections would be a study in itself. 

All that part of the eye in front of the retina is simply an 
optical arrangement by which an image is produced upon the 
retina, such as may be accomplished by any bi-convex lens, 
only infinitely more perfect. The image is inverted, as must 
be the case, with such a lens. 

In the retina are placed the end- organs of vision, and their 
natural stimulus is light. There is some question as to whether 
they can be excited by mechanical or electrical means. Such 
stimuli do without doubt produce luminous impressions when 
applied either to the optic nerve or the eyeball, but it is doubt- 
ful whether the retina itself is affected by any stimulus but 
light. It is thought that there is some chemical action on the 
retina, but what, is not yet well ascertained. 

The optic nerve pierces the sclerotic coat and enters the 
retina about J of an inch to the inner or nasal side of the optical 
axis. The diameter of the optic nerve where it pierces the retina 
is about y^- °f an inch, varying somewhat in different eyes, and 
since at the point of entrance the nerve is wholly insensible to 
light stimulus, it forms what is called the ' blind-spot.' By a little 
contrivance any one can easily discover it in his own eye. Ex- 
actly in the centre of the retina — the place of most perfect optical 
effect, is the ' yellow spot,' with a diameter between Jg and -^ of 
an inch. This spot is best developed in man, and apes among 
mammals, though it has been shown to exist in reptiles. 

The retina is a highly complex structure, colorless and trans- 
lucent, very soft, composed of numberless cells, fibres, end- 
organs, connective tissues and blood-vessels, arranged accord- 
ing to Max Schultze, — a high authority, — in ten layers, in- 
cluding the inner pigment cells of the choroid. It is not 



THE SENSE OF VISION. 63 

necessary to go into details, but beginning at the delicate mem- 
brane which forms the inner lining of the retina, there lie 
immediately behind, and parallel to it, the nerve-fibres, raying 
out in every direction from the optic nerve. They surround, 
but do not cover, the yellow spot, where they are thickest, 
gradually thinning out towards the edges of the retina. 

The several layers which follow, from within outward, are a 
mass of cells or fibrils of various structure, but their functions 
are not certainly known. It is agreed, however, that the true 
end- apparatus of vision is found in the ninth, or layer next the 
choroid coat, called the rod and cone layer, which is composed 
of " multitudes of elongated bodies arranged side by side like 
rows of palisades, and vertically to the surfaces of the retina." 
They are of two kinds, some of them cylindrical, and called 
the ' rods ' of the retina, and others conical or flask-shaped, 
and called the ' cones ' of the retina. The rods are about -gi^- 
of an inch in length, and the cones something like half as long, 
the diameters being about y^-J q-q of an inch for the cones and 
T4W0 f° r the rods. On the exterior of this layer of rods and 
cones lies the pigment-epithelium of the choroid, a perfect 
mosaic of hexagonal cells, in closest connection with it, sending 
up pigmented processes between the rods and cones. 

There is no doubt among physiologists that the true nervous 
effect which gives rise to vision, is due to these rods and cones 
of the retina ; and that the vibrations of the luminiferous ether 
pass through the inner layers and reach these end-organs, where 
the nervous process really begins. 

The mechanical basis of vision, as indeed of all sensation, is 
motion ; but in the case of sight it is infinitely refined as com- 
pared with that of hearing — the sense in which vibratory 
motion is most clearly demonstrable to touch and sight. The 
highest possible sensation of the ear corresponds with a num- 
ber of vibrations many million times less than that of the lowest 
possible sensations of the eye. 



64 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

The fact is, science makes large demands upon our credulity 
in the phenomena of light. In the first place, it is compelled 
to assume the existence of a substance — the luminiferous 
ether, — pervading all space, for the transmission of light at 
all ; and the characteristics of this substance which the undu- 
latory theory of light force upon it, are marvellous in the 
extreme. It has to be so subtle as to allow all bodies to pass 
through it, or itself to pass through them, without the possi- 
bility of discovering that it exists at all as a resisting medium, 
and yet it has to be a solid of a rigidity immensely greater than 
the hardest substance of the earth. It is the vibratory motion 
of this substance which by its action on the retina gives rise to 
the sensation of light. 

Sir Isaac Newton discovered that common light, that is, white 
light, as that of the sun, is not simple but composite. As every- 
body knows, a ray of sunlight passed through a prism gives 
all the colors of the rainbow, and this succession of colors 
arranged as given by a prism, forms what is called the solar 
spectrum, with red at one end and violet at the other. The 
red end of the spectrum is the lowest order of luminosity, and 
is physically due to the least rapid vibratory motion of the 
luminiferous ether, or, which means the same thing, that order 
of vibrations which has the greatest wave length. In dark red 
light the number of vibrations in a second is 392,000,000,000,000 
and the wave length 0.000760 of a millimetre. At the other ex- 
treme end of the spectrum is the violet with 75 7,000,000,000,000 
per second and having a wave length 0.000397 of a millimetre. 
These limits give the extreme range of the eye, and between 
them lie all the other colors. 

The space covered by the prismatic colors in the spectrum 
embraces those ethereal vibrations which lie between the limits 
already given, but there are less rapid vibrations below the 
lower end, and more rapid, far above the upper end. Those 
below produce the most powerful heat effects, and are called 



THE SENSE OF VISION. 65 

'heat rays,' while those above are most active in producing 
chemical effects, and are called /actinic rays.' That these 
phenomena are all connected may be readily made to appear. 
If a current of electricity be passed through a platinum wire 
the temperature will gradually rise as the intensity of the cur- 
rent is increased, until, at a temperature of about 540 , it will 
begin to glow. The light first emitted will be red ; then will 
be added yellow, green, blue, and violet in succession. When 
it reaches white heat it emits all the prismatic colors. 

The number of colors is really infinite, since they grade into 
each other imperceptibly, but there are three colors which seem 
to be fundamentally different from each other, and from all 
others. They are the red, green, and violet. All other colors 
are composite and can be produced by mixing these three, two 
and two, in varying proportions ; but neither the red, green, or 
violet can be so produced. They are therefore primary, and it 
is thought that they correspond to three specific activities of 
the rods and cones of the retina. They may be regarded as the 
three fundamental sensations of the eye. Such is the theory 
of Dr. Young, elaborated by Helmholtz. Homogeneous or 
monochromatic light excites all three, but with varying intensi- 
ties according to the length of the wave. Long waves excite 
most strongly the red, medium waves the green, and the 
shortest, violet. The spectrum presents a succession of color- 
bands, quite distinct though they grade into each other ; they 
are called the ' prismatic colors ' — red, orange, yellow, green, 
cyan-blue, ultramarine-blue, and violet. The bands are not of 
equal breadth, the blue being greatest in extent. If these be 
arranged on a circle with purple between the violet and red, 
and with subdivisions as indicated in the figure here given, 
the two colors lying at the extremities of any diameter when 
mixed will produce white. In any set of such colors, either is 
called ' complementary ' of the other. Any color lying on the 
circumference between the red and green can be produced by 



66 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

mixing these two in proper proportions. So also with those 
between green and violet. Purple, which is not a prismatic 
color, is produced by red and violet. All the colors of the 
spectrum together, of course, produce white. 

PURPLE 





f^\ 




"^ 




¥ 




WHITE 




V 










A 




N33H9 


^f/? 

^-^v 

-*«** 


\< 

rn 
ft* 
ft* 

/o 



Mixing colors, however, is not the same thing as mixing 
pigments, — the results are quite different. For example, if 
chrome-yellow and ult-blue be mixed, a green is the result ; but 
if with the same pigment a disk be painted something over half 
of it blue, and the rest yellow, and then made to revolve, the 
result will be white ; or rather an approximation. In this last 
case the mixture takes place in the retina itself, by reason of 
what is called ' persistence of retinal impressions.' When the 
retina is once excited the impression lasts for a short time — 
from -gVj to -^ of a second — after the removal of the stimulus. 



THE SENSE OF VISION. 6? 

If one looks fixedly at a bright light for a moment, and then 
quickly closes the eye, one sees a luminous image of the object, 
— for a short time quite bright, but gradually fading. Many 
curious illusions are produced through this principle of per- 
sistence. 

These ' accidental ' or ' consecutive ' images are of two kinds, 
— ' positive,' where the eye being fixed but a short time, say, 
i of a second, the image has its lights and shades in the same 
order as in the object; — 'negative,' where the gaze having 
been prolonged, the image has its bright parts where the dark 
parts of the object were, and the reverse. If the gaze be 
upon, say, a disk of yellow paper on a gray ground for fifteen 
or twenty seconds, and the disk be suddenly removed without 
disturbing the eye, there will appear in its place, a blue image, 
that is, the complementary color will appear ; and so with any 
other color. This is accounted for physiologically by the the- 
ory that the retina becomes fatigued by the continued stimula- 
tion, and upon the removal of the stimulus, the eye does not 
respond to the low stimulation of that color in the gray, but 
readily to its complementary color which is also there. It is 
not improbable that some chemical activity also enters the 
problem. 

Colors have three special characteristics, 'Tone,' 'Intensity,' 
and ' Saturation.' Tone depends upon the number of vibra- 
tions per second, and we distinguish different color tones as we 
pass from the red end to the violet end of the spectrum, but 
without marked lines of separation. Intensity is doubtless due 
to the amplitude of the vibrations, and in sensation means the 
greater or less brightness. A tone is said to be ' saturated ' or 
' pure ' when there is no white light mixed with it. It is diffi- 
cult to get perfectly saturated tones except in the spectrum. 
There are an infinite number of ' tints ' or ' shades ' which 
result from mixtures of colors. 

The retina is not all equally sensitive. The ' yellow spot ' is 



68 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

altogether the most sensitive, and it is doubtful whether distinct 
vision is possible except when the image is made to fall on this 
spot. This is why the eye is in such constant motion, and an 
extremely small movement, when the eye is looking in the direc- 
tion of an object, brings the image on this spot. Though the 
spot is so small it corresponds to a visual angle of from 2° to 4 . 
Its extreme sensibility is due no doubt to the immense number 
of cones — said to be one million in an area not greater than 
T i-Q of a square inch. 



CHASM BETWEEN MECHANISM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 69 



CHAPTER VIII. 

CHASM BETWEEN MECHANISM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 

Physiological research with respect to psycho-mechanisms. Protoplasm 
not pure and simple matter. Professor Romanes quoted. Darwin, Huxley, 
Tyndall, and Spencer not materialists. Hobbes quoted. The problem 
of relation between physiology and consciousness. The chasm recognized. 
Leaders of science quoted. 

WE have now before us in outline, substantially all that 
the latest physiological research can tell us touching 
the human mechanism in its relation to the psychic powers. 
To one without some philosophical training, the case might 
well seem to be closed and consciousness and thought accounted 
for. It is not too much to say, perhaps, that the majority of 
those engaged in physical research are quite satisfied that mat- 
ter is the cause of mind ; and it is to be feared that immense 
numbers of people are quietly acquiescing in this unscientific 
science. It is unscientific because science itself, by the voice 
of its chosen leaders, declares it to be so. 

But before we hear the physicists speak, let us look at the 
question a moment for ourselves in the light of common sense. 
In the first place the whole physiological structure is built up 
out of protoplasm ; but protoplasm is not pure and simple 
matter. It is vitalized matter, and so vastly different from dead 
or inert matter. This life-factor cannot be produced from dead 
matter, so far as known, notwithstanding persistent efforts to 
that end. The question of ' spontaneous generation ' may be 
considered as set at rest, since all efforts to evolve life from 
dead matter have failed ; and the scientific world has substan- 



70 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

tially given it up. Since it is impossible to prove a negation 
by experiment, this question can never be settled beyond con- 
tradiction ; but we are bound to take the fact as it stands, and 
recognize in protoplasm that very something, vitality, which is 
not a necessary factor of matter. This non-material factor 
confessedly gives to matter the potentialities through which 
organization and co-ordination are accomplished in all animate 
structures ; and it is through this factor that that one indis- 
putable fact of the universe which we call ' personality ' is made 
conceivable. It is thus absolutely necessary for the physicist 
to start with matter plus the one fact through which explana- 
tion becomes possible, or through which anything ever obtains 
which needs explanation. This the leaders of scientific thought 
clearly see, and have explicitly stated, as will abundantly ap- 
pear; but the metaphysical and theological world, as well as 
most of the popular- science luminaries, are either in ignorance 
of the fact, or regard it as of no importance ; and hence a 
needless alarm on the one hand, and a scornful satisfaction on 
the other. 

Or, again, let us go back to the ultimate basis of certitude, 
which we found in the beginning to be the conscious ego — the 
self — the source and centre of all knowing. We saw that we 
could doubt of all things whatever, protoplasm, the whole ner- 
vous system, motion, the brain and all its functions, but the 
thinker cannot doubt that he thinks, — he cannot doubt that 
he thinks he has, or is, a personality. Protoplasm, or matter, 
or whatever else there may be, then, has no better warrant than 
thought for the conviction, that it is what it is, or, is at all. 

Let me use once more the words of Professor Romanes : 
"All our knowledge of motion, and so of matter, is merely a 
knowledge of the modification of mind. That is to say, all our 
knowledge of the external world, including the knowledge of 
our own brains, is merely a knowledge of our own mental 
states. Let it be observed that we do not even require to go 



CHASM BETWEEN MECHANISM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. J\ 

as far as the irrefutable position of Berkeley, that the existence 
of an external world without the medium of mind, or of being 
without knowing, is inconceivable. It is enough to take our 
stand on a lower level of abstraction, and to say that whether 
or not an external world can exist in any absolute or conceiv- 
able sense, at any rate it cannot do so for us. We cannot think 
any of the facts of external nature without presupposing the ex- 
istence of a mind which thinks them ; and therefore, so far at 
least as we are concerned, mind is of necessity prior to any- 
thing else. It is for us the only mode of existence which is real 
in its own right ; and to it, as a standard, all other modes of 
existence which may be /?zferred must be referred. Therefore, if 
we say that mind is a function of motion, we only say in a some- 
what confused terminology, that mind is a function of itself." 

Philosophy has always had to grapple with this problem of 
the possible nexus between mind and matter. Not to go back 
beyond Descartes, a number of theories have been proposed 
to solve the difficulty, all, now, rather curious than useful, but 
we shall leave them on one side for the present. The only 
theory which concerns us here is that of pure materialism, but 
that is hardly worth consideration, since it is doubtful whether 
there be any materialists, in the proper sense, anywhere. It is 
certain that Darwin was not, and that Huxley, Tyndall, Spencer, 
and all that school who understand their leaders are not, how- 
ever unduly they may emphasize the mere physical side. One 
cannot be a materialist, — one, that is, who is sufficiently 
acquainted with the subject to be entitled to an opinion, since 
we do not even know that there is any such thing as matter, 
except through the necessary postulate that mind is : and we 
cannot conclude that mind is but the product of matter, since 
the effect to be accounted for, in such case, is necessarily the 
factor through which this, or any other cause is demanded. 
Professor Romanes puts this strongly : 

" ( Motion,' says Hobbes, ' produceth nothing but motion ' ; 



72 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

and yet he immediately proceeds to assume that in the case of 
the brain, it produces not only motion, but mind. He was 
perfectly right in saying that, with respect to its movements, 
the animal body resembles an engine or a watch ; and if he 
had been acquainted with higher evolution in watch-making, 
he might with full propriety have argued, for instance, that in 
the compensation balance, whereby a watch adjusts its own 
movements in adaptation to external changes of temperature, 
the watch is exhibiting the mechanical aspect of volition. 
And, similarly, it is perhaps possible to conceive that the prin- 
ciples of mechanism might be more and more extended in their 
effects, until, in so marvellously perfect a structure as the human 
brain, all the voluntary movements of the body might be origi- 
nated in the same mechanical manner as the compensating 
movements of a watch ; for this, indeed, as we have seen, is 
no more than happens in all the nerve-centres other than the 
cerebral hemispheres. If this were so, motion would be produc- 
ing nothing but motion, and upon the subject of brain-action 
there would be nothing further to say. Without consciousness 
I should be delivering this lecture ; without consciousness you 
would be hearing it ; and all the busy brains in this University 
would be conducting their researches, or preparing for their 
examinations, mindlessly. Strange as such a state of things 
might be, still motion would be producing nothing but motion ■ 
and, therefore, if there were any mind to contemplate the facts, 
it would encounter no philosophical paradox : it would merely 
have to conclude that such were the astonishing possibilities of 
mechanism. But, as the facts actually stand, we find that this 
is not the case. We find, indeed, that up to a certain level of 
complexity mechanism alone is able to perform all the compen- 
sations of adjustment which are performed by the animal body ; 
but we also find, that beyond this level such compensations or 
adjustments are never performed without the intervention of 
consciousness. Therefore the theory of automatism has to 



CHASM BETWEEN MECHANISM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 73 

meet the unanswerable question — How is it that in the ma- 
chinery of the brain motion produces this something which is 
not motion ? Science has now definitely proved the correlation 
of all the forces : and this means that if any kind of motion 
could produce anything else that is not motion, it would be 
producing that which science would be bound to regard as in 
the strictest sense of the word a miracle. Therefore, if we are 
to take our stand upon science, and this is what materialism 
professes to do, — we are logically bound to conclude, not 
merely that the evidence of causation from body to mind is 
not so cogent as that of causation in any other case, but that 
in this particular case causation may be proved again in the 
strictest sense of the term a physical impossibility." 

Professor M'Kendrick, University of Glasgow, says : " No 
one doubts that consciousness has an anatomical substratum, 
but the great problem of the relation between the two is as far 
from solution as in the days when little or nothing was known 
of the physiology of the nervous system. Consciousness has 
been driven step by step upwards until now it takes refuge in 
a few thousand nerve-cells in a portion of the gray matter of 
the cortex of the brain. The ancients believed that the body 
participated in the feelings of the mind, and that, in a real 
sense, the heart might be torn by contending emotions. As 
science advanced, consciousness took refuge in the brain, first 
in the medulla, and lastly in the cortex. But even supposing 
that we are ultimately able to understand all the phenomena — 
chemical, physical, and psychological, of this intricate ganglionic 
mechanism, we shall be no nearer a solution of the problem of 
the connection between the objective and subjective aspects 
of the phenomena. It is no solution to resolve a statement of 
the phenomena into mental terms or expressions, and to be 
content with pure idealism ; nor is it any better to resolve all 
the phenomena of mind into terms describing physical condi- 
tions, as in pure materialism. A philosophy which recognizes 



74 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

both sets of phenomena, mutually adjusted and ever interlacing, 
may be no explanation ; but at all events it is unpretentious, 
recognizes the facts, and does not delude the mind by offering 
a solution which is no solution at all." 

As we have said, this point is so clearly seen by all schools 
of thought, that it can hardly be said that there are any materi- 
alists in the proper sense of the word at the present time. 

This is a matter of such moment, that it will be well to sub- 
stantiate the statement by quotations at some length from a 
few of the most distinguished leaders of scientific thought ; 
and we begin with Dr. Tyndall. 

He says, in his lecture on "Matter and Force " : "While I 
as a man of science feel a natural pride in scientific achieve- 
ments, while I regard science as the most powerful instrument 
of intellectual culture, as well as the most powerful ministrant 
to the material wants of men ; if you ask me whether science 
has solved, or is likely in our day to solve, the problem of this 
universe, I must shake my head in doubt. ... As far as I can 
see, there is no quality in the human intellect which is fit to be 
applied to the solution of the problem. It entirely transcends 
us. The mind of man may be compared to a musical instru- 
ment with a certain range of notes, beyond which in both 
directions we have an infinitude of silence. The phenomena 
of matter and force lie within our intellectual range, and as far 
as they reach we will at all hazards push our inquiries. But 
behind, and above, and around all, the real mystery of this 
universe lies unsolved, and as far as we are concerned is 
incapable of solution." 

In his lecture on the " Scope and Limits of Scientific Materi- 
alism," he is, if possible, even more pronounced. He says : 
"lam not mincing matters, but avowing nakedly what many 
scientific thinkers more or less distinctly believe. The forma- 
tion of a crystal, a plant, or an animal is in their eyes a purely 
mechanical problem, which differs from the problems of ordi- 



CHASM BETWEEN MECHANISM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 75 

nary mechanism in the smallness of the masses and the com- 
plexity of the processes involved. Here you have one half of 
our dual truth ; let us now glance at the other half. Associated 
with this wonderful mechanism of the animal body we have 
phenomena no less certain than those of physics, but between 
which and the mechanism we discern no necessary connection. 
A man, for example, can say, I feel, I think, I love; but how 
does consciousness infuse itself into the problem ? The human 
brain is said to be the organ of thought and feeling ; when we 
are hurt the brain feels it, when we ponder it is the brain that 
thinks, when our passions or affections are excited it is through 
the instrumentality of the brain. . . . 

" The relation of physics to consciousness being thus invari- 
able, it follows that, given the state of the brain, the corre- 
sponding thought or feeling might be inferred ; or given the 
thought or feeling, the corresponding state of the brain might 
be inferred. But how inferred ? It would be at bottom not a 
case of logical inference at all, but of empirical association. 
You may reply that many of the inferences of science are of 
this character ; the inference, for example, that' an electric cur- 
rent of a given direction will deflect a magnetic needle in a 
definite way ; but the case differs in this, that the passage from 
the current to the needle, if not demonstrable, is thinkable, 
and that we entertain no doubt as to the final mechanical solu- 
tion of the problem. But the passage from the physics of the 
brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthink- 
able. Granted that a definite thought, and a definite molecular 
action in the brain, occur simultaneously ; we do not possess 
the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, 
which would enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from 
the one to the other. They appear together, but we do not 
know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded, strength- 
ened, and illuminated as to enable us to see and feel the very 
molecules of the brain ; were we capable of following all their 



j6 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

motions, all the groupings, all the electric discharges, if such 
there be ; and were we intimately acquainted with the corre- 
sponding states of thought and feeling, we should be as far as 
ever from the solution of the problem, ' How are these physical 
processes connected with the facts of consciousness ? ' The 
chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still remain 
intellectually impassable. Let the consciousness of ' love, 1 for 
example, be associated with a right-handed spiral motion of 
the molecules of the brain, and the consciousness of hate a 
left-handed spiral motion. We should then know when we 
love that the motion is in one direction, and when we hate that 
the motion is in the other ; but the ' why ? ' would remain as 
unanswerable as before. 

"In affirming that the growth of the body is mechanical, 
and that thought as exercised by us, has its correlation in the 
physics of the brain, I think the position of the ' materialist ' is 
stated, as far as that position is a tenable one. I think the 
materialist will be able finally to maintain this position against 
all attacks ; but I do not think, in the present condition of the 
human mind, that he can pass beyond this position. I do not 
think he is entitled to say that his molecular groupings and his 
molecular motions explain everything. In reality they explain 
nothing. The utmost he can affirm is the association of two 
classes of phenomena, of whose real bond of union he is in 
absolute ignorance. The problem of the connection of body 
and soul is as insoluble in its modern form as it was in the 
pre-scientific ages." 

Professor Tyndall goes even further than this : in the October 
number of the Contemporary Review, 1872, he says : " It is no 
departure from scientific method to place behind natural phe- 
nomena a Universal Father, who, in answer to the prayers of 
his children, changes the currents of phenomena. Thus far 
theology and science go hand in hand." 

Again, at Manchester he declares : " I have, not sometimes 



CHASM BETWEEN MECHANISM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. J? 

but often, in the springtime . . . observed the general joy of 
opening life in nature, and I have asked myself the question, 
Can it be that there is no being in nature that knows more 
about these things than I do ? Do I, in my ignorance, repre- 
sent the highest knowledge of these things existing in the 
Universe ? Ladies and Gentlemen, the man that puts that ques- 
tion fairly to himself, if he be not a shallow man, if he be a 
man capable of being penetrated by profound thought, will 
never answer the question by professing that creed of Atheism 
which has been so lightly attributed to me." 

Professor Huxley is not in the least behind Professor Tyn- 
dall in the clearness with which he sees the limits of mechanical 
action, nor less pronounced in declarations. He says, in his 
"Lay-Sermon" on "The Educational Value of the Natural 
History Sciences" : "What is the cause of this wonderful dif- 
ference between the dead particle and the living particle of 
matter appearing in other respects identical? That difference 
to which we give the name of Life ? I, for one, cannot tell 
you. It may be that, by and by, philosophers will discover 
some higher laws of which the facts of life are particular cases 
— very possibly they will find out some bond between physico- 
chemical phenomena on the one hand, and vital phenomena 
on the other. At present, however, we assuredly know of 
none ; and I think we shall exercise a wise humility in con- 
fessing that, for us at least, this successive assumption of 
different states — (external conditions remaining the same) — 
this spontaneity of action — if I may use a term which implies 
more than I would be answerable for — which constitutes so 
vast and plain a practical distinction between living bodies and 
those which do not live, is an ultimate fact ; indicating as such, 
the existence of a broad line of demarcation between the 
subject-matter of Biological, and that of all other sciences." 

In his address on the " Physical Basis of Life," he says : 
" Past experience leads me to be tolerably certain that, when 



yS MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

the propositions I have just placed before you are accessible 
to public comment and criticism, they will be condemned by 
many zealous persons, and perhaps by some few of the wise 
and thoughtful. I should not wonder if ' gross and brutal 
materialism ' were the mildest phrase applied to them in cer- 
tain quarters. And, most undoubtedly, the terms of the prop- 
ositions are distinctly materialistic. Nevertheless two things 
are certain ; the one, that I hold the statements to be sub- 
stantially true ; the other, that I, individually, am no material- 
ist, but on the contrary, believe materialism to involve grave 
philosophical errors. This union of materialistic terminology 
with the repudiation of materialistic philosophy, I share with 
some of the most thoughtful men with whom I am ac- 
quainted." 

Again he says : " All who are competent to express an 
opinion on the subject are at present agreed that the manifold 
varieties of animal and vegetable life have not either come 
into existence by chance, nor result from capricious exertions 
of creative power, but that they have taken place in a definite 
order, the statement of which order is what men of science 
term natural law." 

But he reaches the highest possible pitch in the following 
energetic expression : " How it is that anything so remark- 
able as a state of consciousness comes about as the result of 
irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appear- 
ance of the Djinn when Aladdin rubbed his lamp." 

The following assertion which he makes in speaking of 
' Matter and Force ' is all that metaphysic can demand : " It 
is an indisputable truth that what we call the material world is 
only known to us under the forms of the ideal world." 

He says again, speaking of physics and metaphysics : " Their 
differences are complementary, not antagonistic, and thought 
will never be completely fruitful until the one unites with the 
other." 



CHASM BETWEEN MECHANISM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. ^9 

Herbert Spencer is equally definite in his statements. He 
says in the Ni?ieteenth Century of January, 1884: "Those 
who think that science is dissipating religious beliefs and sen- 
timents seem unaware that whatever of mystery is taken from 
the old interpretation is added to the new. Or rather, we may 
say, that transference from one to the other is accompanied by 
increase, since for an explanation which has a seeming feasi- 
bility, science substitutes an explanation which, carrying us 
back only a certain distance, there leaves us in the presence 
of the avowedly inexplicable. . . . But amid the mysteries 
which become the more mysterious the more they are thought 
about, there will remain the one absolute certainty that he is ever 
in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal energy." To this 
Infinite and Eternal energy from which " all things proceed," 
he only hesitates to apply the word ' Person,' because " though 
the attributes of personality, as we know it, cannot be con- 
ceived by us as attributes of the Unknown Cause of things, yet 
duty requires us neither to affirm nor deny personality ; but 
the choice is not between personality and something lower, 
but between personality and something higher, and the ulti- 
mate power is no more representable in terms of human con- 
sciousness than human consciousness is representable in terms 
of plant functions." He says further : " I held at the outset, 
and continue to hold that the Inscrutable Existence, which 
science in the last resort is compelled to recognize as unreached 
by its deepest analysis of matter, motion, thought, and feeling, 
stands towards our general conception of things in substan- 
tially the same relation as does the Creative Power asserted by 
Theology." 

Darwin bears testimony to the same necessity of postulating 
an ultimate Power which is not ' blind.' He says in the 
"Descent of Man" : "I am aware that the conclusions arrived 
at in this work will be denounced by some as highly irreligious ; 
but he who thus denounces them is bound to show why it is 



80 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

more irreligious to explain the origin of man, as a distinct 
species, by descent from some lower form, through the laws of 
variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of the 
individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction. The 
birth of the species and of the individual are equally parts of 
that grand sequence of events which our minds refuse to accept 
as the result of blind chance." 

Dr. Maudsley, in that direful, pessimistic book, " Body and 
Will," speaks upon this point as follows : " Is there any good 
reason why the doctrine of evolution and the doctrine of 
epigenesis should be opposed to one another as irreconcilable 
doctrines ? More correctly perhaps epigenesis is an event of 
evolution, and evolution impossible without epigenesis ; for 
evolution, strictly speaking, is the unfolding of that which lies 
as a pre-formation in germ, which a new product with new 
properties manifestly does not, any more than the differential 
calculus lies in a primeval atom ; while epigenesis signifies a 
state which is the basis of, and the causative impulse to, a new 
and more complex state. There is a leap ; and it is not good 
philosophy to blindfold ourselves with a big word when taking 
the leap, as "some evolutionists will have us do, and then protest 
that we have not taken it." 

The great German physiologist, Du Bois Reymond, is just 
as pronounced as any of these distinguished Englishmen. He 
says, " If we had an absolutely perfect knowledge of the body, 
including the brain and all the changes in it, the psychical state 
called sensation would be as incomprehensible as ever. For 
the very highest knowledge we could get would reveal only 
matter in motion, and the connection between any motions of 
any atoms in my brain and such unique undeniable facts as 
that I feel pain, smell a rose, or see red is thoroughly incom- 
prehensible." 

M. Pasteur, upon taking his place in the French Academy 
must have astonished that body of savants as he uttered the 



CHASM BETWEEN MECHANISM AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 8 1 

following : " Beyond the starry vault above us, what is there ? 
Other starry skies. Well and beyond those? The human 
mind, -swayed by an invincible impulse, will never cease to 
inquire what there is beyond : and there is no point in time 
and space which can set at rest the implacable question. It 
is no use to reply that beyond any given point there is bound- 
less space, time, or magnitude. Such words convey no tangible 
meaning to the human mind. The man who proclaims the 
existence of the Infinite (and there is no man who does not) 
accumulates in that bare statement more supernatural elements 
than are to be found in the miracles of all religions ; for the 
notion of the Infinite has this double character — that it is 
at once self-evident — that it forces itself upon the mind, and 
yet is incomprehensible. . . . This positive and primordial 
notion with all its consequences in the life of societies, posi- 
tivism sets at naught. The Greeks understood the power of 
the unseen world. They have left us the noblest word in our 
language 'enthusiasm,' kv Oeos — an inner God. The great- 
ness of human deeds can be measured by the inspiration that 
gives them birth. Happy the man who has an inner God, — 
an ideal of beauty, — and who obeys his behests. The ideal 
of art, the ideal of science, the ideal of country, the ideal of the 
verities of the Gospel — those are the living sources of great 
ideas and noble deeds — they are illuminated by a gleam from 
the Infinite." 

Like quotations could be accumulated from any number of 
eminent physiologists, as well in America as in Europe, but 
there is no need. It can hardly be disputed that science does 
not countenance a pure, bald atheistic materialism, but on the 
contrary maintains an ultimate power behind all physical 
phenomena. 



82 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 



CHAPTER IX. 

PERSONALITY IN ITS PSYCHICAL ASPECT. 

Analysis of the psychical factor of personality. Three fundamental modes 
of the self — sensation, cognition, and conation. A tri-unity, inseparable 
but logically distinguishable. Sub-consciousness. Unity and plurality. 

THE testimony, as we have seen, of the leaders of science 
to the existence of a chasm in thought, between all pos- 
sible mechanisms, and that ineffable somewhat which we know 
at first hand, and name Personality, is as unqualified as the 
most rigid metaphysician or theologian could ask. Let us now 
consider what is involved in personality as we know it in 
consciousness. 

Take any, — the simplest act of experience. I look at my 
watch and note the hour. A little reflection will reveal to us 
three several modes, or psychical phases of the conscious per- 
sonality in this simple event. First, the figures and hands on 
the face of the watch act as stimuli to the organ of sight and 
produce in me, somehow, the sensation of an object without, 
variously marked : second, I take note of the relative positions 
of the hands with respect to the figures, and understand the 
hour indicated : and third, I am conscious of effort or atten- 
tion throughout the whole event. These three facts of the 
conscious personality are called, respectively, ' sensibility,' ' cog- 
nition,' and ' conation,' — which, in a general way, answer to 
what are commonly known as feeling, thought, and will. 

The one element common to all three of these fundamental 
modes of the self is consciousness, which may be called the 
daylight of personality. It does not itself see, — it does not 



PERSONALITY IN ITS PSYCHICAL ASPECT. 83 

itself feel, modify or arrange, but it lights up the psychical 
world, and thus is the occasion and not the cause of all these. 

While we must clearly distinguish the three elementary 
modes of the self from each other, they cannot be made to 
stand apart as numerically separate, and so are not three totally 
different kinds of knowledge. Neither can they be confused, 
or made to pass one into the other. Each, while not being 
either of the other two, nor in any conceivable way like either 
of them, presupposes both ; and there can never be any, the 
simplest act of illuminated or conscious knowledge in which 
all three are not found as constituent factors. These are sim- 
ply facts of our psychical nature which must be admitted by 
all who understand the force of the terms in which they are 
enunciated. 

We have already seen something of what is known, since 
Herbart, as the ' threshold value ' of sensation ; that is, of the 
intensity which sensation must reach before it, so to speak, 
flows over the threshold of consciousness and becomes dis- 
tinguishable in the self. It is well established that there are 
abundant sensations, or grades of stimulation of the sense- 
organs which are not and cannot be reached by the illumi- 
nating power of consciousness, and yet largely affect the per- 
sonality. These all lie in the region which has been happily 
called sub-consciousness. In the nature of the case it is a 
region, not of knowledge, but of personal activities which make 
it possible for the higher, conscious activities to exist. We 
may pass it by, however, for the present, since we are consider- 
ing only what we know in consciousness. 

To resume : let us try to see how each of the three primary 
modes of the conscious self presupposes the other two. The 
result of a stimulus cannot be a sensation in consciousness 
unless it be known, and it cannot be known unless it come 
within the sphere of attention. But to know is to understand 
or think, and to attend is to conate or energize, — actively 



84 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

that is, or with purpose, or passively, that is, in response to 
solicitation. Any — the simplest effort, must fall within the 
general domain of the will. 

But even after we rise into the clearly marked region of the 
purposive will, we see that external stimuli, and the reactions 
of the physical factor, do not necessarily result in differentiated 
sensation, though far above the threshold value. The greater 
part of what goes on about us is quite lost to consciousness be- 
cause we do not attend. When occupied we do not hear the 
ticking of the clock. The miller is not conscious of the whir 
and jar of his machinery, and the mother is too often wholly 
oblivious to the din and riot of her progeny. One may be 
seriously hurt and know nothing about it. Soldiers wounded 
in action often get the first intimation of it from their com- 
rades. Rapt attention, intense interest, passion or fear con- 
stantly renders one unconscious of what is going on about one 
when out of the focus of attention. 

That there could be no thought without sensation is suffi- 
ciently obvious. The self in a state of absolute isolation from 
the beginning, — if such a thing is conceivable, — could have 
no material of thought and would remain forever without 
knowledge of any sort. 

So with the will. No purposive nor passive activity of the 
conative power is possible without sensibility and cognition. 

And yet, on the other hand, no one of these three modes 
can be in any wise construed in terms of either of the others. 
Feeling has a purely subjective quality, i.e. its content is 
wholly a state or condition of the self, not known or knowable 
to another personality ; while thought is in some sort objective, 
discovering relations which would appear equally to any intel- 
ligence in possession of the facts. Feeling is individual; 
thought is universal. The content of will is effort, with move- 
ment as its end. In a rough way, if I may so say, sensation is 
the object upon which a telescope is directed ; thought is the 



PERSONALITY IN ITS PSYCHICAL ASPECT. 85 

instrument itself, and will is the person using it ; while con- 
sciousness is the light. But an illustration ' must not be made 
to go upon all-fours ' ; and so this must not be taken for more 
than to emphasize the several phases of any psychic event. It 
wholly breaks down when the unity of any such event is taken 
into account. 

But all this will come up as we proceed, and so I leave it for 
the present, with the remark that personality is a mystical tri- 
unity — a fundamental exemplification of the problem about 
which philosophy, ancient and modern, has ever busied itself — 
the co-existence of the ' one and the many,' perhaps a living 
type of the fundamental mystery of the Christian Faith. 



86 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 



CHAPTER X. 

DEVELOPMENT OF THE PSYCHICAL ASPECT OF PERSONALITY. 

The relation of the mechanical and psychical factors. Mutually neces- 
sary. The human organism at birth. The line between elementary 
consciousness and self-realization shadowy. Automatic action. Basic- 
personality. Evolution. Continuity and discontinuity. Instincts. Jelly- 
specks. Ants. Chcetodon rostratus. The beaver. Domestic animals. 
Inverse order of intelligence and instincts. A Evolution as well as an 
evolution. Instincts gradually replaced in ascending order of nature. 

SENSATION is the common ground upon which the self 
and the non-self come together. The psychical factor of 
the personality must be present, or, no matter what charac- 
ter or variety of stimuli, acting on the mechanism, produce in 
it divers states or conditions, there would be nothing to read 
or interpret these states, and so no sensation : the non-self 
must be present, or, no matter how responsive the psychical 
factor may be, there would be nothing to know or feel, and so 
no sensation. Of these two factors, the external stimuli may 
be regarded as prior in time, since the psychical factor waits to 
be acted on ; but logically the psychical factor must be prior, 
since it must be ready and in waiting. But sensation given, it 
is impossible to conceive of a total separation, and so there is 
no actual priority, any more than in an explosion it can be 
said that the spark is prior to the gunpowder, or the gun- 
powder prior to the spark. It is a case of ' action and reac- 
tion,' which, by a fundamental law of mechanics, are always 
equal and contrary, carrying with them the necessary notion of 
simultaneity. An external world out of and apart from all sen- 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE PSYCHICAL ASPECT. 87 

sation cannot be conceived. The self in a state of absolute 
isolation, even if sensation had been previously awakened, could 
not retain sensation, since its own modes or states, in such 
case, must be regarded as objective, and so take their place 
with the non-self. We must, therefore, hold fast by the reality 
of the ego and the non-ego, as we saw in the beginning ; but 
the positive factor is the ego which alone gives meaning or 
conceivable existence to the negative factor — the non-ego. 

It cannot be denied that the child comes into the world in 
an advanced state of reflex activity. The organism is com- 
plete, — muscles, nervous system, and all manner of tissue in 
full working order. It is impossible to say whether there is any 
degree of consciousness present at and before birth, or not. 
It can hardly be denied from and after that event, but there 
seems to be no sufficient physiological reason to fix upon any 
exact moment at which it makes its advent, and so no reason 
why some low order of consciousness may not exist previous to 
birth. That the self is construed or differentiated in thought, 
cannot, of course, be contended ; but personality must undoubt- 
edly obtain. The self must be before it can know itself to be. 
There may be, for aught we know, a whole world of sub- 
consciousness in the region of reflex activity. The ego's 
knowledge of itself, or consciousness proper, comes late, and 
at no distinguishable date. The line between elementary con- 
sciousness and self-realization is altogether shadowy, and logi- 
cally cannot be said to exist at all, since the knowledge of a 
beginning implies a knowledge of that which is before the 
beginning. A limit cannot be conceived as existing from one 
side alone. A thing cannot be known for what it is, until it is 
known for what it is not ; for otherwise it must expand itself 
without limit in every possible direction, and in every possible 
quality or state ; and so, becoming limitless even in the bare 
fact of its existence, would be as though it were not. 

This opens up to us the consideration of that vast region of 



88 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

vital activity, called automatic. We cannot thrust it aside, and 
we cannot explain it by the principle of pure mechanism. It 
has in it, ex hypothesis that factor of the Universe which is not 
material, or, to be safe, which removes living matter worlds 
away from dead matter, — a fact freely admitted, as we have 
seen, by the leaders of scientific thought. In the lowest vital- 
ized form, — in the protoplasmic unit, the life principle is what 
gives rise to structure />r mechanism, and without it no such 
thing could come to pass. 

There seems to be no good reason why the metaphysician 
and the psychologist should hesitate to go down fearlessly into 
this world of basic personality and claim for it the heritage 
which the physicists so freely proffer. If the evolutionist can 
build up the marvellous human mechanism out of the minimum 
of structure, and even it confessedly dependent upon vitality as 
a necessary condition, why may not the psychologist build up 
the conscious personality out of the positive and antecedent fact 
which the physicist has to borrow for his structural advance? 
Surely there is an advantage in the start, and in the end the 
jump from the highest dumb creature to speech-using man is 
not more desperate than the leap which the physicist is com- 
pelled to make from the highest brute mechanism to that of 
the lowest human organism, plus his psychic nature. 

And so with the theologian; if he is not to hold to irarae- 
diateism in the creation of man, why may he not reverence 
and adore the Creator in the up-building of, and preparation 
for, the human personality through innumerable sub-conscious 
beings of which He himself is the Author and Sustainer, as 
fully as he can in a discontinuous and orderless creation. For, 
admitting any sort of orderly sequence and dependence — and 
who does not? — it is too late to object to intermediations, 
unless, indeed, the degree and complexity of such dependent 
sequences is the ground of complaint, — a position few would 
care to assume. Besides, the theologian is irrevocably com- 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE PSYCHICAL ASPECT. 89 

mitted in the Christian Faith to a stupendous Messianic evolu- 
tion ; and perhaps, when rightly understood, the Personality 
of the Christ sweeps through and embraces all finite evolutions. 
But a theory which shall be large enough to embrace Him, 
who ' lifted with His pierced hands empires off their hinges, 
and turned the stream of centuries out of its channel, and still 
governs the ages,' cannot be a one-sided half-truth. When the 
evolutionist shall add to the theory as commonly propounded, 
the fulness of that life-factor, acknowledged, but made so little 
of in the development of mechanism, which implies an ever- 
active and intelligent Personality, the physical side will have 
lost nothing, and the metaphysical will feel itself no longer 
outraged. 

Natural selection is a principle recognized as existing prior 
to the first possible movement towards the development of 
structure ; and implies an active power (nature) behind it — 
propulsive and purposive at every stage, from start to finish, in 
the up-building of tissue. At numberless points new principles 
are necessarily assumed ; as sensation, volition, admiration, 
sense of beauty, fitness, pugnacity, courtship, love of ornament, 
novelty, sexual affinity, and morality, — all of which belong to 
the ideal world, and so find their place on the other side of the 
chasm which confessedly separates matter, as matter, from 
the conscious world. It is a question of no consequence as to 
whether these are added successively as they are needed, ab 
extra, by the power of nature (only another name for the 
ultimate source of all activity, and, according to Mr. Spencer, 
only not the Infinite Personality of the Theologians because 
it may be higher), or are potentially in the life-principle from 
the beginning. The state of the case is not in the least sim- 
plified, whether it be assumed as a perfect continuum without 
break or pause, or as a succession of stages with intervals 
between. A continuum is inconceivable (as will appear further 



90 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

on), and no mortal wit can bridge the chasm between ' sweet ' 
and ' red/ or between ' natural selection ' and ' heredity.' 

So far as experience can testify, the breaks are found all 
along the line; and discover themselves. in the most surprising 
way in human physiology. For example, what is Weber's Law 
but an irrefutable witness to a lack of continuity in conscious- 
ness in response to unbroken gradation in stimuli? What is 
every heart-beat, every pulsation of nerve-fibre, but the effect 
of change and discontinuity? I do not see that there is the 
choice of a pin's point between the action of Nature (the All- 
Father), by successive starts and stops, or by an unbroken 
continuity- — either being utterly inconceivable. But however 
else we may think, the evolutionist cannot be permitted, with- 
out protest, to shut his eyes to the life-element, with its psychical 
potentialities, which lies on the other side the chasm which 
separates mere mechanism from the thought world. 

It would be freely admitted by the evolutionist, no doubt, 
that the vast region of so-called automatic action in animal 
tissue is due to the life-principle, which, starting in the lowest 
protoplasmic unit, becomes more and more marked as we 
ascend towards man ; and that the world of reflex action, called 
instincts, is due to this principle. 

This instinct world is a wonderland indeed, so complex and 
unerring that it takes on the look of intelligence and design. 
Dr. Carpenter, speaking of jelly-specks (rhizoftods) says, Sup- 
pose a human mason to be put down by the side of a pile of 
stones of various shapes and sizes, and to be told to build a 
dome of these, smooth on both surfaces, without using more 
than the least possible quantity of a very tenacious but very 
costly cement in holding the stones together. If he accom- 
plished this well, he would receive credit for great intelligence 
and skill. Yet this is exactly what these little jelly-specks do 
on a most minute scale ; the ' tests ' they construct, when highly 
magnified, bearing comparison with the most skilful masonry 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE PSYCHICAL ASPECT. 91 

of man. From the same sandy bottom, one species picks up 
the coarser quartz-grains, cements them together with phos- 
phate of iron secreted from its own substance, and thus con- 
structs a flask-shaped ' test ' having a short neck and a single 
large orifice. Another picks up the finest grains and puts them 
together with the same cement into perfectly spherical ' tests ' 
of the most extraordinary finish, perforated with numerous 
small pores, disposed at pretty regular intervals. Another 
selects the minutest sand-grains and the terminal portions of 
sponge-spicules, and works them up together, apparently with 
no cement at all, by the mere 'laying' of the spicules into 
perfect white spheres, like homoeopathic globules, each having 
a single fissured orifice. And another, which makes a straight, 
many-chambered ' test ' that resembles in form the chambered 
shell of an Orthoceratite — the conical mouth of each chamber 
projecting into the cavity of the next, while forming the walls 
of its chambers of ordinary sand-grains rather loosely held 
together, shapes the conical mouths of the successive chambers 
by firmly cementing together grains of ferruginous quartz, which 
it must have picked from the general mass. 

Everybody has some knowledge of the wonderful instinctive 
action of bees, wasps, ants, and other social insects. They pre- 
sent a sort of parody on humanity in their individual com- 
munity and governmental polity. The Bee is wonderful enough, 
but the Ant seems to be entitled to claim a fuller round of the 
virtues and vices of man-life. The ' queen ' has her retinue 
of servants ; the community has its architects, laborers, nurses, 
foragers, physicians, and soldiers. They are not without pam- 
pered aristocrats, who 'lord it over' multitudes of miserable 
slaves captured in battle and 'sold in the shambles.' They 
have their milch-cows and beasts of burden. Nor does it all 
look like machine work. They appear to gather information 
through scouts, assist each other in emergencies, contrive means 
of meeting difficulties purposely put in their way by experi- 



92 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

menters, consult together. — indeed they exhibit in miniature 
about all that men do consciously, so much so, that some 
investigators do not hesitate to declare that in their opinion 
they are possessed of consciousness. 

There are, however, insuperable difficulties in the way of 
such a conclusion, — the very perfectness of their movements 
telling against the hypothesis. Dr. Carpenter speaks of a 
little fish (the chcetodon 7-ostratus') , which shoots out drops 
of a fluid from its prolonged snout, so as to strike insects that 
happen to be near the surface of the water, thus causing them 
to fall in, and be brought within its reach. Now by reason of 
the refraction of light, as he points out, the real place of the 
insect in the air is not that at which it appears to the eye in the 
water, but a little below its apparent place ; and to this point 
the aim must be directed. The difference between the real 
and apparent place, moreover, is not constant, but varies con- 
siderably since the rays are bent at different angles at the surface, 
in consequence of the difference of slant when the insect is 
directly above or to one side of the fish. 

It is surely a little too much to assume that the fish under- 
stands the laws of refraction. And besides, if the movements 
of the lower animal world are the results of conscious intellec- 
tion then these lower orders are infinitely more intelligent than 
man, for he does not know how he performs any bodily 
action, — he is not conscious of what nerves or muscles he uses 
in any act of locomotion or speech, — indeed, so far as con- 
sciousness goes he does not know that he has either nerves or 
muscles. 

But this perfectness of automatic action sometimes leads to 
very absurd results. Dr. Carpenter gives the experience of 
Mr. Broderip with a beaver taken very young and kept in his 
house. Its building instincts showed themselves before it was 
half grown, when let out of its cage, and materials were put in 
its way. It would drag a sweeping-brush or warming-pan, 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE PSYCHICAL ASPECT. 93 

taking the long materials first, to the place determined upon 
for his structure, and placing some of these perpendicularly to 
the wall, would fill up the area with " hand-brushes, rush-baskets, 
boots, books, sticks, cloths, dried turf, or anything portable. 
As the work grew high, he supported himself with his tail, which 
propped him up admirably ; and he would often, after laying 
on one of his materials, sit up over against it, appearing to con- 
sider his work, or, as the country people say, ' judge it ' • this 
pause was sometimes followed by changing the position of the 
material ' judged,' and sometimes it was left in its place. 
After he had piled up his materials in one part of the room 
(for he generally chose the same place), he proceeded to wall 
up the space between the feet of a chest of drawers which stood 
at a little distance from it, high enough on its legs to make the 
bottom a roof for him, using for this purpose dried turf and 
sticks, which he laid very even, and filling up the interstices 
with bits of coal, hay, cloth, or anything he could pick up. 
This last place he seemed to appropriate for his dwelling ; the 
former work seemed to be intended for a dam." As Dr. Car- 
penter says, nothing could be more absurd from the reasoning 
point of view, than the attempt of the animal to construct a 
dam where there was no water, and a house where he was 
already comfortably lodged. 

When we come to the domestic animals we are constantly 
misled into attributing conscious deliberation and thought to 
what no doubt belongs to the domain of reflex phenomena. 
Wonderful as the performances of these creatures are, it is 
hardly probable that any of them ever reach the stage of self- 
consciousness. As we have seen in the insect world, the teach- 
ings of physiology would have to be all reversed if we were to 
conclude that, with their lower development of the nervous 
organism, they have an intellectual eminence which is wanting 
in far higher orders of development, even in man. It can 
hardly be contended that even the child has any clearly differ- 



94 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

entiated self in the first weeks or months of its post-natal exist- 
ence, — and that after it shows perfectly well marked evidences 
of thought, such as is worlds beyond what the highest brute 
ever exhibits ; and if this be true, it is not unreasonable to 
think that no brute ever attains self-knowledge. 

Again, it is to be noted that in the animal kingdom there is 
a fairly well marked inverse ratio in the order of intelligence 
and instinct. I am aware that this has been disputed ; but 
the arguments against it do not seem to be sufficient to over- 
set the opinion of Cuvier, who asserts it. At any rate, man, 
while standing at the head of all earthly beings in rational 
powers, certainly stands at the bottom in his exhibition of that 
sort of pseudo-intelligence which the creatures below him 
possess at first hand in such high degree, exhibiting in the ant 
a complexity and perfection which startles one with its likeness 
to the slowly and painfully acquired knowledge in man. The 
calf, the colt, the pig, come into the world thoroughly furnished 
with the power of muscular co-ordination ; while man has to 
learn every step of the way. They know — (observe here in 
the use of the word ' know,' how deeply the purely intellectual 
element is read into reflex action) — they know where their 
sustenance is to be found, and how to get at it. The infant 
would perish if it were not helped to the breast ; but once 
there, the one conspicuous automatic function left man out of 
the infinite store below comes into play ; but even that disap- 
pears, or is inhibited at will after it has served its purpose ; 
that is, as soon as the child has learned the complicated move- 
ments in the business of mastication, and is furnished with the 
necessary instruments with which to begin operation on solid 
food. We may well surmise that even this sucking instinct 
would have disappeared with the numberless others, if it had 
not been absolutely necessary for the child in its utterly helpless 
stage. Without this link with the pseudo-intelligent world, all 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE PSYCHICAL ASPECT. 95 

the mothers and nurses on earth could not get an infant over 
the first months of its existence. 

The difference in the lower animals is immense. Nothing is 
more curious than to see, say, a pig, the moment after birth, 
trot around, and fight its way in among its fellows for its share 
of the lacteal supply. Thus there seems to be an order of 
devolution, as well as an order of evolution, along which Nature 
works, — parallel, though bearing an inverse ratio to each other : 
the one moving from inchoate structure towards greater and 
greater specialization and complexity ; the other, starting in 
purely instinctive self-motion, loses its blind cleverness by 
stages, until it all but disappears in man. The one starts in 
potentiality, out of which more and more complex structural 
forms emerge ; the other starts in determinism, and emerges 
in potentiality. It seems probable that this inverse ratio could 
be traced backward along the whole line of the evolutionists, 
but I can only illustrate what I mean. Thus, though man has 
been a speech-using animal all through the ages, no child ever 
comes into the world with a word ready formed on his lips, 
while the potentiality or capacity for language and the mechan- 
ism necessary therefore has been greatly increased. The Fly- 
catcher, just out of the shell, strikes at and captures an insect 
with the utmost precision ; the infant, with a native power to 
master the problems of the stellar depths, knows nothing at 
the start of directions and distances. This, it seems to me, is 
a fundamental distinction. Mechanism is potentiality fettered 
by determinism ; personality is determinism swallowed up in 
potentiality. 

It may not be out of place to say that in all this I am far 
from implying anything touching the ultimate destiny of the 
inferior animals. I have no desire to go beyond Bishop But- 
ler, who declares any discrimination against the brute creation 
in this regard to be both ' invidious and weak,' speaking of it 
with scorn as ' the invidious thing.' Nor do I ignore the fact 



g6 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

that some, perhaps all animals, are teachable, and have under- 
standing in some degree, and so are conscious, though not 
self-conscious ; while, on the other hand, man is, in the begin- 
ning, and remains through life, dependent in great measure 
upon the reflex mechanism of his nature, yet he is almost 
without instinct proper, that is, action which has the look of 
intelligent forecasting, but is really the result of a blind propul- 
sion. Instinct is gradually replaced in the ascending order of 
nature by understanding; and whatever can be learned by 
conscious effort is left to be so acquired : and thus it is that 
man, infinite in power and wisdom potentially, is at birth the 
most helpless and ignorant of all created beings. 



THE CONCEPT-FORMING PROCESS. 97 



CHAPTER XL 



THE CONCEPT-FORMING PROCESS. 



Muscular co-ordination. Education of the organism. Vital organs not 
under control of the will. Analogous psychical conditions. Process of 
thought development. Like and unlike. Discovery of meaning. Atten- 
tion. Retention. Concepts. Concept-masses. Apperception. Thought 
as thought. Language. Introspection. ' Pure ' and ' Empirical Ego.' The 
• One ' and the ' Many.' A sense of knowing deeper than ' understanding.' 
Personality antedates knowledge. 

THE human organism in its infinite complexity is com- 
plete at birth. The muscles are already equal to con- 
siderable effort. It is not for lack of strength that the infant 
does not use hands and feet at once, but because it does not 
know how to co-ordinate the complex system of muscles. This 
co-ordinating power has to be gradually acquired through con- 
scious effort. Even the reflex-centres, in large part, have to 
learn their work. This education is accomplished in the begin- 
ning through a low order of consciousness, — sub-consciousness, 
indeed. The self does not know what the office of any organ 
of the body is, nor where it is, nor even that there are any 
organs ; but the vital tides, so to speak, surge to and fro 
throughout the mechanism, and the infant finds, little by little, 
that it has power to control the movements of the body, and 
purposive effort follows. The exercise of distinctive purposive 
action doubtless long precedes any proper recognition of the 
end in view, or the means by which it is reached. 

There is a constant play between the three fundamental 
modes of the personality — sensibility, cognition, and conation 
— each performing its office because it cannot help it ; while 



98 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

the reflex nerve-centres learn their parts in response to voli- 
tional command, at first painfully and slowly, until at last they 
perform their functions with automatic promptness. In learn- 
ing to play on an instrument, to sew, or to knit, everybody 
knows how slowly and awkwardly the fingers respond to the 
bidding of the will ; and how many times a movement must 
be gone over before smoothness and certainty can be had ; but 
after awhile, the fingers seem to do the work of themselves. 
What is more striking, they seem to be able to do their parts 
better, in mere mechanical actions, without thought than with 
it. Take one who has a little knowledge of (say) the flute, 
let him work out a few tunes from the notes with the tyro 
flutist's usual persistence, until they are well memorized. He 
will now play them better when unconscious of effort than 
when he bends his whole soul to the performance. Moreover, 
the fingers will now do for him in their office, what he for his 
life cannot tell them in advance they ought to do. If you ask 
our supposed youth, for example, what the fingering is in the 
fifth bar of any familiar piece, or what notes will be used in 
transposing that bar to another familiar key, he cannot at once 
tell you ; but the fingers will make their dispositions in either 
case without the slightest hesitancy as they come to them in 
order. In this case there has been conscious effort at every 
step along the way; but the reflex centres when they have 
once thoroughly learned their part are rather hindered than 
helped by any officious interference on the part of the under- 
standing. This work of translating thought and purpose into 
automatic action goes on from the earliest stages of infancy 
till the close of life, so that it may be said at last that we belong 
to our habits, rather than that our habits belong to us. The 
simple truth is, man is born a co-ordinator and unifier ; and 
he begins his work, by virtue of a propelling power which 
comes with him somehow, long before he knows what being in 
the world means ; and continues long after he has found out, 



THE CONCEPT-FORMING PROCESS. 99 

or has given it up. This power is a simple fact, wrought into 
his nature by the All-Father, or, if one likes it better, by that 
' Unknown Cause of things ' which, if not personal, is ' some- 
thing higher than Personality.' Through this power, which 
man can neither get out of his nature nor explain, the fruits of 
conscious work are all the time passing into the unconscious, 
and, no doubt, essential personality, in its two-fold factors — 
physical and psychical. 

But let us be careful to distinguish at this point. As has 
been often said already, the human organism is full of reflex 
activities, but of instincts proper, that is, of activities which 
appear to be intelligently directed but are not, it has a very 
minimum. The mere mechanism upon which the psychical 
factor of the personality is superposed is in a great degree 
independent of conscious energy. Most of the organs of the 
body do their work without thought, and in spite of it. The 
heart with the whole vascular system, the respiratory organs, 
the sympathetic and gastric systems, and even the nervous 
system, in large part, are essentially automatic, out of and 
beyond the control of volition ; and this for the plain reason 
that they could not be trusted to volitional control. If the 
heart and lungs were dependent upon the will, we could not 
maintain our existence. We should die in some moment of 
forgetfulness, or in sleep. The mechanism of the personality 
is precontrived for us, and regulates itself. We are given a 
limited control, indeed, but only by violence can we stop or 
resist its action. But in all this, it will be observed, no knowl- 
edge or semblance of knowledge comes to us. The organism 
will not, untaught, draw a straight line for us, nor shape a 
letter, utter a word, or tell us a single fact in mathematics, 
geography, or physics. It only stands ready to help us to all 
these, and to untold stores of knowledge beyond. Thus man 
potentially knows all that can be known, but actually knows 
nothing whatever. 



IOO MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

In like way, there are certain fixed and necessary elements 
discoverable in the psychic factor. We must think, and feel, 
and act ; we must combine and contrive ; and in exerting 
these psychical activities, we fall upon certain absolutely neces- 
sary truths which we neither make, nor are able to unmake ; 
as that we exist, and things exist, — that one thing is not 
another thing, — and that three things are more than two things, 
and all that : but not one of these is a ready formed notion in 
the mind. In between, there is a vast area of purely volitional 
control, and through it we are constantly changing, for the 
better or worse, both the physical and psychical factors. 

It is no good to resist or complain : we are given a certain 
capital ; we must use and increase it, or abuse and lose it. 
To express it in another way : nature gives man power to know, 
but furnishes him with no ready-made knowledge. 

Through external stimuli, and by means of the several organs 
of sense, the rational nerve-centres are forced to respond in 
certain reactions, which would remain simply and forever reac- 
tions and nothing more, if it were not for the psychical power 
of co-ordinating and arranging. No single sensory effect could 
have meaning, and no thousands, so long as each one remained 
isolated and unlinked to the others. It is not enough that they 
shall simply be, or that they shall be, in themselves, like or 
unlike, — precede and follow, — but the self must discover this 
before the notion of agreement and difference can arise in the 
personality. It is not until after these successive and varying 
reactions have come before the co-ordinating and unifying 
activity of the self, over and over again, that the new thing, 
* meaning,' stands out in consciousness. If a rose be the 
stimulus, the vibrations of the luminiferous ether are not 'red,* 
the irritations of the olfactory nerve are not ' sweet,' nor are the 
tremors of the muscles of the fingers ' heavy,' nor are they all 
together in any wise like the notion of the rose in the mind. 
They are each and all of them but the physical signs by which. 



THE CONCEPT-FORMING PROCESS. IOI 

the self reads into them the meaning which is the mental 
rose. 

This may be understood by a telegraphic message. The 
ticking of the instrument might go on forever, without any 
message, if there were no operator who knew the signification 
of the clicks ; but by one who understands what to most of us 
are but senseless sounds, they are woven together until the 
meaning is clear. This power to ' understand ' is so familiar to 
us that we can hardly enter into its wonder. 'Meaning' is 
wholly unlike, in degree and kind, the electrical impulses along 
the wire, or the ticking which results. 

The electrical transmission is analogous to the action of the 
sensory nerve ; the click of the instrument may be compared 
to the reaction of the nerve-cell, but the meaning is only in the 
mind of the operator. Motion in any form is but a fact of 
mechanism, and its physical results are but dead symbols ; in 
themselves wholly meaningless until the psychical factor appears 
upon the scene. Between this factor and the symbols is a 
world-wide chasm over which no conceivable bridge has ever 
been built by the wit of man ; and yet this chasm is crossed 
and recrossed in fact, every moment of our lives. 

We see, then, that it is not any individual nerve-action, nor 
any succession of them that is sensation, but it is their inter- 
pretation through the arranging and co-ordinating power of the 
self. Sensation proper is thus not physical, though it has a 
physical basis, but belongs to the psychical side of personality. 
Now, in ord&r that there shall be arrangement, there must be 
attention or conation ; so that the action of the inchoate will 
must be present in interpreting the most elementary signs 
which come to the self from the external world. But, as we 
have seen, attention to individual or isolated sensory actions 
would accomplish nothing, — there would be no meaning in a 
bare fact out of relation ; so that there is another element 
necessary before any co-ordination shall take place ; it is reten- 



102 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

tion. The present sensory act must be put alongside of, and 
compared with, other such acts, and the likeness or difference 
noted. But all save the present act are gone : they must 
therefore be brought back by some power ; and this power we 
recognize in retention, or the rudimentary memory. We have 
now all that is necessary to the formation of a concept, — divers 
sensory acts held together by the elementary memory, attention 
by which activity is directed, and the understanding by which 
they are seen to agree or disagree. A ' concept ' (con-capio, 
to bring together) is thus the product or joint action of all 
the several modes of the ego, sensation, cognition, and cona- 
tion, and, if I may so say, on the field of memory and in the 
light of consciousness. 

In the above elementary exposition of the concept-forming 
process, we have left out of sight all details so as to present 
the matter simply and connectedly. It has, perhaps, been 
sufficiently indicated that there are many stages between the 
dawn of conscious recognition of things and events, and the 
full day of external perception and self-introspection. 

In all the earlier stages, concepts are vague and ill-formed 
— they have been called gathering mists or cloud-masses. 
These are ever changing, through the rushing in of newly 
formed concepts, and, as in the beginning the child has no 
prejudices (which is only another way of saying that its con- 
cepts have not yet become permanent), these masses are ever 
breaking up and reforming under the action of accumulating 
material. Gradually those notions which have gathered into 
themselves as a centre the multiform fragments of half-formed 
concepts, endure and become for us the real and actual. 

This reaction of mind in unifying the materials of knowledge 
is called 'apperception.' The older and better formed con- 
cepts (to continue our material simile), meet and absorb, or 
modify the newer. The older concept is called the 'apper- 
ceiving ' — the newer, the ' apperceived.' The once formed 



THE CONCEPT-FORMING PROCESS. 103 

and measurably permanent notion has a great advantage over 
one just emerging in consciousness. It will attract to itself 
what is like, and reject what is incompatible in the new. There 
is thus a fairly steady growth, and an increasing confidence in 
our own ideally-real world ; and this becomes stronger until 
no sort of new notion can gain a permanent footing in the 
presentative, or sense-perception area ; as well as in another 
region — the rational or a priori area, of which we shall have 
a good deal to say further on. 

But there is still another and a less permanent field — what 
may be called the region of contingent and speculative knowl- 
edge, in which radical changes may be wrought by the presen- 
tation of new matter. Older apperceptive strongholds are 
sometimes broken up, and the ordinary process reversed ; but 
this becomes more and more rare as age advances. 

It will be seen that the simplest concept is a fasciculus or 
bundle, never one and single. We have here once more, the 
' many in one.' In its formation we have the process of differ- 
entiation, or differencing, inasmuch as the individual elements 
which compose the complex whole must be distinguished, be- 
fore they can be united. We have also the process of ' inte- 
gration,' or bringing together into unity. That is to say, we 
have rudimentary analysis and synthesis ; and each implies the 
other, inasmuch as there can be no whole, without a recog- 
nition of parts • and no parts, without the recognition of the 
whole. They are, thus, but the two phases of the same act, 
like the fabled shield which was both ' argent and gold.' 

It is plain, also, that there must be discrimination or com- 
parison in the lowest concept formation. Thus the thought- 
power, in its elementary form, reaches down to the very bottom 
of all sense-perception ; but in this low form it does not stand 
out as clearly differentiated thought. It is not until the process 
of apperception is well advanced that we recognize thought as 
thought. When concept is compared with concept, the pur- 



104 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

posive action of the will becomes manifest, and we have what 
has been called ' redintegration.' We may now be properly 
said to think • and the product of the thought is a larger or 
resulting concept called a judgment. Thus, a judgment may 
be defined to be the recognition of the agreement or disagree- 
ment of two concepts. 

But the two concepts so compared must have each a mental 
form or sign, else they could not be recognized so as to be 
compared. These signs are subjective words, and when they 
are given articulate, or any sort of expression, they are lan- 
guage. Taken with this modification, Professor Max Mtiller, 
and those who preceded him, are certainly right in the declara- 
tion that there can be no thought without language. We shall 
have to return to this further on. 

Our knowledge of the outer world is built up, as we have 
seen, through sense-perception ; but there is a vast domain 
which the senses do not discover, but grows out of those psy- 
chical limitations spoken of a moment ago. Such notions as 
' truth,' and ' right,' and ' mercy ' have no discoverable element 
in common with sense-perception. One cannot see ' mercy ' 
with the eye, nor discover it by any other sense ; and it has no 
likeness to anything in external nature. There must be then 
another and a higher domain than the external, and the way to 
it is quite different from that through the senses. What we have 
been so far speaking of may be called ' sensuous truth ' ; this 
higher region ' rational truth.' I only mention it here, that 
we may not hastily conclude that the world of sense furnishes 
us with all knowledge. 

Again, there is self-knowledge, or a comprehension of the 
fact that we 'know,' and what we know, — the knowledge of 
our own thoughts and emotions, — the phenomenon of self- 
consciousness. The knowledge of the body belongs, of course, 
to sense-perceptions. My hand is an external object to my 
mind, as much so as a book or table : so is any member, organ, 



THE CONCEPT-FORMING PROCESS. 10$ 

or tissue, or so much of any one as can be made an object of 
sense-perception. 

In like manner, I not only think and feel, but I can make 
my thought or feeling an object of thought. Thus I turn my 
thought-power inward, and think upon the notions or states of 
the self. Now these notions or states are not the self, any 
more than the hand or the foot is the self. They are, however, 
phenomena of the self. Everything I know of, or in, the self, 
is an experience of the ego ; and all these put together consti- 
tute what is called the ' empirical ego'; while the subject of 
all such experiences — the essential self — is called the 'pure 
ego.' 

Now it is the ' pure ego ' that is the one, original and indis- 
putable fact for every man ; and so, known to each of us in a 
way no other fact can be known. It is the basic truth to which 
every other truth must be referred — the centre and source of 
all certainty. As such it cannot be tried or measured by any 
other truth whatever. If it were so, it would at once follow 
that there could be a higher and more certain truth. It is 
therefore ultimate, self-asserting, single. It is not possible to 
compare it with anything else, because it is a unicum, without 
place or parts, and cannot be said to be known in thought at 
all, since thought implies relations. I know it all the time and 
every how — in sensation, thought and will; but these phe- 
nomena do not prove it to me. It is susceptible of no proof, 
for it is beforehand with all possible proof. It is not suscepti- 
ible of definition, for its sole limitation is that which involves 
the self as a necessary factor. To say, ' I am I ' is an identical 
proposition which advances nothing. To say, ' I am not, not I,' 
separates it indeed from all but itself, but that not-itself depends 
solely upon the self for its content. 

And yet the self exhibits modes and activities ; feeling, 
thought, and action are its notes, or marks ; and they have no 
meaning apart from it. Here we are brought face to face 



106 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

again with the eternal riddle of philosophy — the ' one and the 
many.' As we have already seen, we can neither understand 
the ' one/ nor the ' many ' except as either acts as the back- 
ground of the other. The one cannot have parts, nor sides, 
nor phases — since it would then cease to be 'one.' It cannot 
have place in space nor in time : it must be out of all possible 
relation; and so have nothing left by which to make itself 
known ; and thus the manifold must be brought back before 
the one can have any sort of meaning for us. 

But the 'many' is in just as bad case. It can have no 
meaning without the one, for each attribute, sign, or note must 
be recognized as ' one ' before it can be cognized at all. The 
many cannot be many except it be composed of elements or 
units. But all this lies in the province of metaphysic, and is 
familiar to every student of philosophy. It is as old as Par- 
menides, and found everywhere through Plato. It is hydra- 
headed, always starting up whenever we force our thought into 
the region of the ultimate. 

Now, we do without doubt know the 'one,' and no plain 
man ever suspects that there is any trouble about it, and per- 
haps would fail to see any after the most persistent efforts to 
point it out; and so with the 'many.' There is a sense of 
knowing, therefore, which is deeper than that of mere intellec- 
tion. What we commonly call the understanding must deal 
with subject and predicate. That it is at all, depends upon 
the shackles in which it is bound. It cannot transcend the 
trammels of limitation ; but the self, as we have seen, is not 
the mere intellect, — the intellect being itself but a mode of 
the self, and dependent upon it. The self is, therefore, logically 
prior to the first dawn of the intellect and is its source and 
support. It comes, somehow, at first hand from the source of 
all giving. 

There is a sense, I repeat, in which we use the word ' know,' 
that is deeper than that in which we use it when we speak of a 



THE CONCEPT-FORMING PROCESS. 107 

cognition through the understanding. It is the sense in which 
I know my own existence, though I cannot construe or explain 
it to myself or another — the sense in which I know my thought 
to be mine, and one thought to be different from another. It 
is the ground of all first-hand knowledge, the only warrant, ulti- 
mate truth of any kind can have. It comes nearest to being 
pure feeling, perhaps, and is a condition of all knowing in the 
sphere of relations. Truths of this primordial character, I can 
reflect upon, note their activities, and wonder at ; but cannot 
construe — they have no quale or whatness for me. Thus, 
while I know that I am what I am in my essential personality, 
by a necessity that is absolute and inexplicable, the self which 
I construe, I know only through my modes and activities. This 
empirical knowledge has the self for its subject, and is what we 
call introspection, — self-consciousness. It is the manifesta- 
tion of the self to the self — the intellectual apprehension of 
the ' empirical ego.' 

This introspection or self-conscious knowledge is difficult, 
and therefore late in development. It undoubtedly lags con- 
siderably behind sense-perceptions, and like it undergoes the 
apperceiving process. It is thus shifting and variable, growing 
into greater and greater stability. This is why people know 
themselves so little, and so different from what they appear to 
be as seen by others — felicitously put by Dr. Holmes in his 
"Three Johns." Out of this mass of self-knowledge, there is 
built up a concept, appearing no one knows exactly when, 
which we call the f me ' — the ' myself.' This also belongs to 
the intellectual zone of our being, and is the result of the some 
time continued action of the ' pure ego.' This ' pure ego ' 
stands, from an epistemological point of view, in quite an analo- 
gous category with the substance or ' itness ' of any material 
object, with the difference that the substance of the object gets 
its meaning wholly from the ego. Personality, which is but 



108 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

another name for the ' pure ego/ antedates all understanding 
of itself, and it is in the active enjoyment of its manifold pre- 
rogatives long before it has any explicit knowledge of its heri- 
tage, much as an infant king is actually a sovereign long before 
he has any apprehension of the dignity to which he is born. 



FUNDAMENTAL MODES OF THE SELF. MEMORY. IO9 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE FUNDAMENTAL MODES OF THE SELF. MEMORY. 

Consciousness. Differentiation of Feeling. Of Cognition. Of Will. 
An end ideally first. Self-development. Perception. Intuition. Ideas in 
the mind not like objects without. Space. Time. Memory. Mechanical 
basis. Objection of Lotze. Complexity. Illustration from Sound. Phe- 
nomena explicable upon theory of mechanical basis. Dr. Rush's case. 
Dr. Carpenter's Welshman. Coleridge's case. Power to recall the past. 
Sudden recollections. Law of Association. 

CONSCIOUSNESS may be called the daylight of the self. 
Whenever any psychical effort or reaction rises above the 
intellectual horizon, — which may be called the threshold of cog- 
nition, — the self recognizes it, and this recognition is what 
we call understanding. But the line of separation between the 
conscious and the unconscious events of Personality, is not 
definite and exact, but vague and shadowy, like the separation 
between night and day. A vast amount of the life-history of 
the ego lies below the illuminated circle, in the totally obscure 
or dimly-illuminated region. All reflex action proper, and all 
the rudimentary work of apperception lie either below the 
horizon of consciousness, or in the border-land. This is not 
only true in the initial stages of existence, and during the 
gradual evolution of self-recognition, but it is true all through 
life to its very end. Thus it is that we know nothing of the 
greater part of the bodily movements under our control ; nor 
of much that goes on about us at any time ; while we know 
nothing of what takes place when we are asleep, or otherwise 
unconscious. It would be intolerable if one had to be con- 



110 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

scious of the movement of every muscle, the action of every 
nerve-fibre, and of every object and event about one in the 
external world. It should seem that one of the chief functions 
of the * inhibitory ' mechanism is to produce silence, so to 
speak, in the auditorium of consciousness, when attention is 
not necessary, somewhat as the musician lays his hands upon 
the strings of the harp to stop their vibration when they have 
done their office. 

Now, as a fact, out of the sub-conscious personality, either 
by the development of a new and higher physical basis of 
psychical action, or from the further and more delicate differen- 
tiation of existing nerve organisms, there does emerge what we 
have called the dawn and daylight of the self. It is only then 
that we begin to recognize the three fundamental conscious 
activities of the self, so repeatedly spoken of, — sensation, cog- 
nition, and conation. 

Let us look at these separately for a moment. First, sensa- 
tion, which shows itself from the protozoa up, has been an 
active agent in the work of tissue building in all reflex mechan- 
isms on to the evolution of the psychical centres ; but when 
consciousness, in its own right, appears upon the scene, it takes 
an immense flight, and becomes what we call ' feeling.' With 
it comes a new heaven and a new earth. Old things have 
passed away. It is a translation into light out of darkness. It 
is true, the personality cannot maintain itself wholly in the new 
regions so revealed. The roots must still remain in the soil 
below, and so the immense mechanical work which is necessary 
as a substratum of this new world of feeling is carried on still 
by the same sub-conscious agencies. 

With regard to cognition, or the power which discovers 
meaning in things and events, that, too, has been working all 
through the processes of advancement. It is, indeed, difficult 
to form any notion of what ' meaning ' can be when not lighted 
up by consciousness ; but, when rightly considered, not more 



FUNDAMENTAL MODES OF THE SELF. — MEMORY. I I I 

difficult than to conceive what unconstrued sensation can be. 
We, from the sphere of consciousness, are compelled to read 
into it, as well as into sub-conscious sensation, what conscious 
experience has taught us. There is, however, a solution of this 
which must be admitted as a possible hypothesis, and which to 
many seems the true way of regarding it. It is that the per- 
sonality through the whole of its sub-conscious period has its 
feeling and its thought in and through the Infinite Personality, 
— that as the Ultimate Causative Power is leading, or propel- 
ling all processes on to an end, He supplies everything that is 
needful ; so that sensation and thought find, all along through 
the darkness, their reality and light in Him, much as the lower 
animal world is helped forward by instinct. 

The case is quite analogous with the development of cona- 
tive or elementary effort into purposive Will. It seems plain 
that the whole animal creation below man cannot be set down 
as mere machines, without including man in the same purely 
mechanical category ; but as we have seen, there really seems 
to be no school of thought which holds such a radical theory. 
The lower order of animals not being then mere machines, con- 
scious action must be attributed to some of them ; and if to 
some, then, to those below unless a clear line of separation can 
be found. But this, it is confessed, is impossible. Where, 
then, are we to stop ? Effort of some sort, active or passive, 
must be admitted down to the protoplasmic unit, and there 
seems to be no halting place until we reach it. 

At the point of its emergence into the light of consciousness, 
however, we recognize it first in what we call attention. It 
then begins to stand out more and more distinctly and in fuller 
proportions until at last we discover the fact that the sovereign 
principle of the personality — the will — has quietly seized the 
reins and conscious self-determination has begun. 

Not until now, and perhaps not for some time after, does 
the concept of the self, clear and certain, stand out to he self ; 



112 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

so true is it that that which is first in idea and essence, and for 
the sake of which all intermediate stages have value, is last in 
manifestation. The seed is for the tree, the tree for the bloom, 
the bloom for the fruit. The end of this sequence was at the 
beginning in the seed, unless we are to give up all meaning 
whatever. It is the same in the works of man. Take a single 
illustration. Workmen break up and drag forth great masses 
of stone from the quarry ; others toil at transporting them to 
the sea-shore ; again they are seized and carried forth, — 
thrown overboard and sink out of sight. What folly to one not 
in the secret ! But gradually an artificial island rises above 
the surface ; and on this a tall shaft shoots up, and finally a 
blaze of light streams far over the ' waste of waters,' a beacon 
of safety to the mariner, while warning him of danger. The 
engineer who planned all this, and carried it on through its 
successive stages, saw that blaze of light from the beginning ; 
and only in the reality of that first light in the mind, is there 
reality in the final blaze on the sea. And so with anything that 
has meaning. And thus it is that the ideal and the real are 
both beginning and end. 

It is not until after this reality — the self, both new and 
old — has, so to speak, attained its majority, that it enters 
upon its distinctively purposive existence. A new factor has 
appeared upon the stage as marvellous as consciousness itself, 
the power of self-direction and self-limitation ; and we find 
ourselves masters of our own movements within large limits, 
mechanical and psychical, imposed by the Author of ex- 
istence. 

We now arrive at the true self-formative stage of personal 
development. Up to this time, the personality has been chiefly 
subject to the push and pull of the world-evolver, and the work 
accomplished has been the developing of organs, and their 
functions, for the true work to be done with them by the self 
in its own up-building. While the mighty power behind all 
phenomena does not cease to sustain and propel, now that It 



FUNDAMENTAL MODES OF THE SELF. — MEMORY. II3 

has vested the self with this highest prerogative, self-direction, 
It confines its offices to .those of the silent and humble sort, 
devolving responsibility on the self in the ratio of its elevation. 
The self enters upon its newly discovered functions with full 
authority of self-direction, and a large province in which it has 
the power to carry its purposes into effect. Its work is, in legal 
parlance, to ' reduce the Universe to possession,' building up 
within a self-world with greater or less fidelity to the reality 
without and above it ; refining, strengthening, and enlarging 
itself in the three- fold modes of thought, feeling, and conduct. 
The world known, is the objectified self; the self knowing, is 
the subjectified world. The self can know nothing of reality 
which has not in thought entered into and become in so far 
itself. A landscape lies spread out ; it may be miles away : I 
know it by the reactions in my mechanism, due to sensory 
changes. On the other hand, whenever I try to think upon 
myself, it is some phase or other of the empirical ego which 
engages my attention, and so is in so far an element of the non- 
ego. 

If the work of the self upon the material furnished it in the 
reality without be well and faithfully done, the self-world will 
be true ; if falsely and faithlessly done it will be false, and the 
personality, living thus in a false environment, must be itself 
false in one or other, — it may be in all its modes. This we 
shall understand better farther on. 

This process of seizing upon, and bringing in the Universe, 
is progressive and complicated. It is partly due to environ- 
ment, and partly the result of purposive and self-directed 
action; but the self in its highest mode is guarded by its 
nature against whatever in environment has not its active co- 
operation. Perception, or it may be called ' thing-knowledge/ 
is forced upon the self through external stimuli, and is, in so 
far, mechanical ; but whatever use the self makes of such crude 
material will have value from the character of the purposive 
element which enters the action. 



114 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

Perception, in its proper psychological sense, is the imme- 
diate knowledge of ' thing ' now, and here present as a stimulus 
to psychical action, — ' thing ' being taken in its largest sense. 
'Perception' is often used loosely, to embrace any notion 
in the mind, whatever be the content ; as when one says one 
perceives (comprehends) the truth of a mathematical prop- 
osition; perceives (understands) the excellence of a method, 
or the advantage of a particular course of action. Perception 
in the stricter sense must have an objective reality as its con- 
tent. An event may be the object of a perception, but in 
strictness it is not the event itself, but the mechanical element 
is the necessary factor, and it is for this reason that it is so 
largely forced upon the self by environment. The perceived- 
world is just as much of actuality as is present to conscious- 
ness, through the action of stimuli, at the moment of such 
action. 

It is not our object to discuss problems, and therefore it is 
not necessary to enter upon the many phases presented by 
different theories of perception. Whether an object is seen 
immediately, i.e. seen face to face, and in its own right ; or, 
mediately, i.e. through the agency of something not the object 
perceived, has engaged the earnest inquiry of philosophers in 
the past. In our view of the case, it is either, or both, as the 
inquiry is presented. It is to be remembered that the body 
is not the self, nor are the nerves, and nerve-centres, nor the 
whole of the personal mechanism, what I know in conscious- 
ness as ' me.' The self is not shut up in the brain, nor is there 
any power to find, or to conceive of where it is, or what it is. 
With this carefully in mind it seems a rather barren question 
to ask whether the self knows any particular object, as a tree, 
or is only told about it by something else. The only knowing 
that is done in the case, is done by the self, for certainly 
neither the nerves, nor the air, nor the luminiferous ether 
know anything about it ; and can tell nothing. Again, what 



FUNDAMENTAL MODES OF THE SELF. MEMORY. I 1 5 

is the tree to be known? Of course the phenomenal tree. 
Nobody contends that we can know the de-phenomenalized or 
essential tree. Now where are phenomena known ? at the end- 
organs of the fingers, or the retina of the eye, — or at the tip 
of the tongue ? Surely not ; nor yet at the nerve-centres. 
Knowledge is in, and through, all these, however, and when- 
ever they may be stimulated ; and all knowledge is in the self, 
and not at the tree nor anywhere. It has no space form ; 
and so the question as to representation or immediate per- 
ception has really no substantial meaning. All we know, or 
ever can know, about an object is a concept of the object of 
greater or less fidelity to the externally subsisting truth ; and 
just as this knowledge becomes fuller and more accurate, the 
self has reduced more and more truth of the Universe to 
possession. 

When it is contended that we see the very tree itself, we 
say, indeed we do. We see just that which the tree was 
designed to show forth in color, and in every other way of 
appeal to us. We have no thought of any agencies or inter- 
mediations. We are directly conscious of the only sort of 
tree there is for us, — that of which we have a notion in the 
mind, and project as a necessary part of that notion in space, 
just at that place, and in just so much of it, as is in that notion. 
If it be said, But we may be mistaken ; and may find that the 
actual tree, and our concept of the tree, do not agree, such 
an objection arises from the failure to take in rightly what the 
relation between the concept and the actual tree really is. The 
concept is not necessarily, perhaps never is perfectly true to 
the object ; but it is at any moment exactly what we see and 
know of the object at that moment. It may be mended a 
moment after, and then we shall have a juster look at the tree ; 
but this in no wise affects the reality of our first look. It 
would be quite as reasonable for one looking at an object 
through an ill-adjusted telescope to say he was not looking at 



Il6 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

the object at all, because the next minute, by better adjust- 
ment, he could see the object more clearly. 

It may be well to caution the reader against the notion that 
the concept of an object is in any manner like the object- — 
like in a pictorial sense. If one could look into the mind of 
another with every possible degree of refinement in detail, we 
should see no set of little pictures or images ; nor anything 
more resembling the objects of sense without, than the written 
characters which tell me of my friend's good fortune are like 
my friend, or the event. ^These are in the mind signs, or 
whatever else they may be called, which the self can spread 
out into a picture, or a truth, but likeness there certainly is 
none. 

Now, how it is that the concept of externality or ' outness ' 
arises in the mind in the beginning does not much concern us 
to inquire, except perhaps as a curious question. It has been 
much discussed, and there are some difficulties about it in a 
philosophical sense ; but none whatever in a practical way. 
One pushes out the hand originally because, perhaps, one is 
alive. It does not seem that any great difficulty should be 
felt that a living organism moves. This means change of 
place in whole or part, and room for movement ; so that there 
is no lack of material out of which to build up the concept of 
space. Whether motion alone with the sense of touch would 
give rise to any right notion of form and figure has been vigor- 
ously disputed ; but with the sense of sight superadded, the 
practical result is clear ; and that is sufficient for our purposes. 

Space is thus a necessary element of perception. Since a 
perception must be of an object or event now present, Time 
enters as a necessary factor. We do not now open the inquiry 
as to what time is ; but in its empirical aspects it presents 
difficulties enough. Like space, there are no practical diffi- 
culties, for we know all about Time, as St. Augustine has said 
long ago, if we do not attempt to explain. But when we say 



FUNDAMENTAL MODES OF THE SELF. MEMORY. II7 

' now present,' it may reasonably be asked what we mean by 
now 1 and the answer is not quite obvious. We may say that 
we mean to exclude the past, and not to include the future. 
But what is left when these are gone? The past claims the 
second or the least portion of the second which was just here, 
and the future will not lend the present the most infinitesimal 
part of a second which has not yet arrived ; so that the present 
is reduced to zero, or at most to a mathematical line without 
breadth, separating the past from the future. The past 
moment has vanished, the present is without duration, and the 
future certainly is not yet. But for all that the present is a very 
real somewhat, — perhaps in strictness the only time-reality. 
Indeed, whatever is above the threshold of cognition is now 
present, and continues to be the present as long as it continues 
within the illuminated circle of consciousness. The change 
which takes place in this field of view is what we call succes- 
sion. Time can hardly be said to have length, except in a 
borrowed sense, since length is a dimension, and belongs to 
space, and time and space are incommensurate. 

But do we not know the past? Certainly ; but whatever we 
know of it is present. All the past there is for us, — that is to 
say, all that we do know, or ever shall know, of what was once 
within the sphere of consciousness must come again within 
that sphere, and be present once more, before it can be known. 
The past is the present knowledge of psychical conditions 
already experienced ; the future is the present knowledge of 
psychical conditions in anticipation of experiences to come. 

That power or instrumentality which is charged with the 
office of bringing past acts of consciousness back once more 
to the present is called memory. We have seen it all along in 
a humble sphere, where it was called ' retention.' It is no new 
thing, but has now passed from its inchoate form, and entered 
upon its time office within the illuminated circle of conscious- 
ness. It had to be, in some rudimentary form in the earliest 



II 8 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

manifestations of animated nature, existing far below the line 
of consciousness, — perhaps even in the elementary protoplas- 
mic mass, — in order that any sort of unity might obtain among 
the varying phases of the several life-modes. Retention, thus, 
is, so far as we know, simple and fundamental, while memory 
is complex and highly specialized, retaining its original biologi- 
cal character, but with a psychic factor superadded which quite 
transforms and sublimates it. In its rudimentary form its 
office is to retain or link together the states and activities of 
the living organism ; in its psychic form to preserve the conti- 
nuity of the acts of consciousness. Thus it does not simply 
conserve the individual facts once present to the mind as so 
many units. It is the concept-continuum or plexus of the 
conscious personality. It is the unifying bond of the empirical 
ego, which is constantly undergoing change, precisely as in the 
process of apperception. What we know of a thing at any 
moment — which is only another way of saying, what we are 
at any moment with respect to the thing — that the memory 
preserves to us. As this knowledge is made up of many ele- 
ments superposed and blended into a complex whole, so with 
memory. Any special deliverance of memory may be com- 
pared to the composite effect produced by superposing many 
faces upon one photographic plate. Each individual leaves its 
effect behind, but is modified by each in turn. The first glance 
of any object gives rise to some modification of the psychical 
mechanism. The next changes or fills out the first, and so on 
through any number of observations, or through one entire and 
continuous scrutiny. No two observations — no two consecu- 
tive reactions of the psychical cells are precisely the same in 
perception, but all blend into each other, giving rise to greater 
distinctness at some points, and less at others ; and this change 
continues indefinitely, though becoming more and more stable 
by persistence. This marvellous composite effect in percep- 
tion and in thought is committed to the keeping of memory. 



FUNDAMENTAL MODES OF THE SELF. MEMORY. I 19 

It is thus the nexus of the empirical ego, and gives stability to 
each modified concept, maintaining the continuity between 
successive acts of knowledge. 

Now, happily memory does not force upon us all at once, 
and all the time, what it is ready enough to present, or rather 
re-present ; nor is it so officious as to retain at all, in any dis- 
tinct form, much of what was once in consciousness. Life would 
indeed be intolerable if one could forget nothing. In one 
sense, there is nothing forgotten, — that is to say, every psy- 
chical energy is, doubtless, gathered up in the composite con- 
cept ; but in the blending process much is forgotten and lost 
to consciousness. 

The physiology of memory has been earnestly discussed, and 
the reasons presented for holding that it has a mechanical basis 
in cerebral action are exceedingly strong, — indeed, too strong 
to admit of successful refutation. The metaphysicians, as a 
rule, have set themselves against the physiologists in this regard ; 
but, it should seem, the contest is unequal, and the point not 
worth contending for. No one in these days pretends to deny 
that the brain-cells play an important part in sense-perception, 
or the ' presentative ' power ; and this conceded, it is hopeless, 
even if there were any point to be saved, to deny them some 
part also in the ' representative ' power. 

The difficulty urged by Lotze, namely, that the reactions 
of the cerebral centres are infinitely varied in every act of 
perception, as when "we see some one approaching, every 
step nearer he comes, the image on our retina assumes larger 
dimensions ; hardly one point of the whole figure answers at 
any one moment to the same spot of the eye as at the moment 
before ; not one after-image, but numberless images all dif- 
ferent one from another would remain, if our nervous organs 
fixed every momentary impression in permanent traces," seems 
to tell just as heavily against the power of the self to read at 
any moment a definite perception into this ' agglomeration' of 



120 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

brain-action — a position he seems to accept without question 

— as against its being able to do the same thing in the after- 
effects of these same signs. That motion, however infinitesi- 
mal, when communicated to masses, must by the principle of 
inertia continue until dissipated, or converted into some other 
form of energy, is too well established in molecular physics to 
be easily shaken ; so that it seems impossible to dispose of the 
brain-states instantly at least; and if they continue for one 
instant after the action of the stimulus is withdrawn, why not 
for the next ; and where shall a limit be found ? And if they 
continue at all, there seems no earthly reason that they should 
not be intelligible, just so long, and in such degree, as they 
continue to subsist. 

The objection on account of their complexity is one that 
may well stagger us ; but science has already made such de- 
mands upon our credulity in this regard, that it is now too late 
to halt upon a mere question of degree. Take, for example, 
that experiment in sound, given already upon the authority of 
Dr. Tyndall, in which a piano, two floors below the lecture- 
room, sends up its vibration by means of a rod resting on the 
sounding-board. Reflect upon the fact that each of the wires 
struck has upon it, in addition to its fundamental swing, a 
multitude of superposed vibrations, or over- tones, — that the 
sounding-board has to break up into an infinite number of 
vibrating segments with fixed nodal lines between, in order to 
respond to each of the strings and their innumerable ' partials,' 

— that somehow these all, without losing their independent 
existence, have to find their way to the sharpened end of the 
rod, and then interlace or pack themselves together without 
loss or confusion, so as to accommodate themselves to the quite 
different form of the rod, and then spread out over the reso- 
nating body at the upper end, — ■ itself repeating under changed 
conditions the complexity of the sounding-board, and then on 
through the air to the still more marvellous mechanism of the 



FUNDAMENTAL MODES OF THE SELF. MEMORY. 121 

ear, — what room is there, in the light of such bewildering 
complexity, to stand out upon the ground of mechanical diffi- 
culties ! But all this, we have every reason to think, is but the 
beginning of the intricacies of motion in nature, when we con- 
sider the demand made upon us in molecular physics. 

In the phonograph we have what seems to answer in a 
remarkable way to what is supposed to be the action of the 
nerve-cells in the case of memory. In it, the amazing fact 
confronts us that the human voice can be, so to speak, wrought 
into a waxy composition in a jagged line plowed by the point 
of a stylus in such wise that the infinitesimal variations of the 
impressions, upon reversing the process, give back the words 
with the tone, accent, and timbre imparted to them by the 
voice ! One feels, notwithstanding the evidence of eye and 
ear, that it must be some unread page of the Arabian Nights' 
Entertainment, so far is it beyond the powers of the under- 
standing ; and yet all this, for delicacy and rapidity of move- 
ment, stands untold degrees below the phenomena of light, 
heat, and electricity ; and who shall say how far these in turn 
are removed from the possible refinement of motion in gravita- 
tion, chemical affinity, and vital action ! 

We cannot stop to bring together in any detail the physio- 
logical reasons for holding that the brain, somehow, retains in 
its molecular structure the signs of past cognitions, but it will 
be well to mention some of the many phenomena which find 
explanation upon this hypothesis. 

First, injury to, or the removal of certain areas of the brain, 
as we have seen, cuts off all recollection of objects previously 
known, as in the case of an animal when food is presented. 
The power of perception is, of course, involved ; but it will be 
remembered that memory is absolutely necessary to any act of 
perception. Besides, there are many cases on record of people 
who have received injuries of a special area of the brain, who, 
although they continued to understand perfectly what they 



122 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

wanted to say, had lost the recollection of the proper word or 
words necessary to convey their meaning. The connection 
between thought and language is very extraordinary. Dr. 
Abercrombie mentions the case of a man who had lost the 
knowledge of spoken names, though he knew them well enough 
if written • and, retaining the sound of such a word in his mind, 
upon looking in a list containing the word, when his eye fell 
upon it, would recognize it at once. In cases of the softening 
of the brain, and in the cerebral changes due to old age, memory 
is greatly affected ; sometimes almost wholly lost. 

There are many other phenomena which find their only 
scientific explanation in impeded or peculiarly excited cerebral 
action. For example, the well-known case of the student in 
Philadelphia, reported by Dr. Rush, who, on recovering from a 
fever, had lost all his acquired knowledge. " When his health 
was restored, he began to apply himself to the Latin grammar, 
had passed through the elementary parts, and was beginning to 
construe, when, one day, in making a strong effort to recollect 
a part of his lesson, the whole of his lost impressions suddenly 
returned to his mind " ; due doubtless to the removal or ab- 
sorption of some stoppage in blood circulation. 

Dr. Carpenter gives an account of an old Welshman, who, 
separated from all who spoke Welsh for fifty years, found him- 
self entirely unable to understand his relatives, who, on a visit 
to him, spoke in their mother-tongue ; but in an attack of fever 
when past seventy, he talked Welsh fluently. Cases not unlike 
this are quite common. 

The most extraordinary case of this sort is given on the author- 
ity of Coleridge. In a town in Germany, a young woman, who 
could neither read nor write, was seized with a fever, and be- 
gan to talk in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. 'Whole sheets of 
her ravings were written out, and found to consist of sentences 
intelligible each for itself, but with little or no connection with 
each other. Of the Hebrew, a small portion only could be 



FUNDAMENTAL MODES OF THE SELF. MEMORY. 123 

traced to the Bible ; the remainder seemed to be in the Rab- 
binical dialect. All trick or conspiracy was out of the question. 
Not only had the young woman ever been a harmless, simple 
creature, but she was evidently laboring under a nervous fever.' 
The case was followed up by a young physician, who succeeded 
in finding that at about nine years of age she had been living 
in the family of a learned Protestant pastor, who had had the 
habit of walking up and down a passage of the house which 
opened into the kitchen, reading in a loud voice out of his 
favorite books. A considerable number of these books were 
still in the possession of the old scholar's niece, who said ' he 
was a very learned man, and a great Hebraist.' Among the 
books were found a collection of Rabbinical writings, together 
with several Greek and Latin Fathers ; and the physician suc- 
ceeded in identifying so many passages with those taken down 
at the young woman's bedside, that no doubt could remain in 
any rational mind concerning the true origin of the impressions 
made on her nervous system. Coleridge adds, 'This authenti- 
cated case furnishes both proof and instance, that reliques of 
sensation may exist for an indefinite time in a latent state, 
in the very same order in which they were originally impressed.' 
This hypothesis of a measurably permanent molecular arrange- 
ment of the cerebrum, as a basis of memory, seems, in some 
sort at least, to explain certain well-known phenomena of every- 
day experience. Every one has the power of overhauling his 
own knowledge in great degree at will; that is, of bringing 
back into consciousness what was once present in thought, but 
is now out of the field of view. This is commonly called the 
power of ' recollection ' or - reminiscence,' it being accom- 
plished by a conscious effort of volition. If the physical signs 
of all such past acts of consciousness be still dormant in the 
brain, it only needs that they be revived to be re-read by the 
conscious self, and this may very well be effected by a reflex 
brain action, which sends (say) the ever varying blood-tides 



124 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

through the areas in which the molecular dispositions lie inac- 
tive, causing them to stand out, so to speak, like certain invisi- 
ble inks, which, by the action of a liquid or heat, have their 
molecular arrangement so revivified as to render the dominant 
words distinctly visible. As to how the will acts to find the 
desired area, there seems to be no more difficulty than there is 
to explain how it is that it manages to find certain muscles of 
the body in speech and locomotion. One does not know in 
consciousness a single nerve or muscle of the many called 
into action to crook one's little finger, and yet it is no sooner 
thought upon than done. There seems to be no good reason 
why some analogous reflex mechanism may not exist to govern 
past knowledge. It is, perhaps, but a reverse action of the 
' inhibitory ' mechanism. 

This purposive power to recall past concepts enables one to 
wander back into past scenes and 'fight one's battles o'er'; 
but its work is immediate and constant. It is necessary in 
every act and in every concept, for it is needed to recall the 
mental state of a moment ago, as much as years gone. It is 
absolutely necessary in every act of perception, for, since per- 
ception is not a single sensation, but a composite of many, this 
purposive memory must bring the divers elements together. 
This is of itself reason enough to establish the fact that memory 
has a physical basis, so long as such basis is granted at all in 
any psychic phenomenon. 

Again, it is well known that at the most unexpected moment, 
and without any sort of conscious volition, the memory of 
something long out of the field of consciousness suddenly 
appears once more. Very often the recollection seems to stand 
alone ; that is, out of any train of preceding ideas ; but once 
present, it is clearly seen to connect itself with other memories 
as old as itself. Then, again, everybody knows that thoughts 
and memories are often forced upon one, especially when one 
wants to lose one's self in sleep, and cannot, or when there is a 



FUNDAMENTAL MODES OF THE SELF. MEMORY. 125 

subject which one wants especially to keep out of mind. The 
theory of a physiological basis affords a sufficient explanation 
of these phenomena, since it is only necessary to assume that 
latent molecular arrangements are quickened into renewed 
activity by brain-stimulation of one sort or another. 

Great stress has been laid upon what is called the " Law 
of Association," and the Empirical school of thought, from 
Hobbes to Spencer, attempts to explain by it the whole world 
of mental phenomena. It is by no means modern, but it has 
been enormously elaborated in these last years. The law may 
be stated somewhat as follows : Ideas or notions in the mind 
never stand isolated or single, and the presence of any one 
has a tendency to call up any other of the group to which it 
belongs. This seems an obvious and natural truth in view 
of the facts, as they have presented themselves to us, in the 
knowledge -forming and knowledge-conserving process. Asso- 
ciation seems nothing more than the continuity of the empiri- 
cal ego, with the brain-mechanism as its physical basis. 



126 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



THE IMAGINATION. 



Definition. Classification. Cognitive and Sentient Imagination. Eco- 
nomic and Rational Imagination. Artistic and Rhythmic. Music. Rela- 
tion of Memory and Imagination. 

THE memory has no power to carry us back actually into 
the past, though it deals exclusively with acts of past 
consciousness, that is, with whatever now remains in the self 
of such previously excited activities. It projects these back 
into what we call time past, just as perception in time present 
projects its presentations into space. 

Now the notion of past time carries with it, necessarily, as a 
negation, time to come or the future. The present is the meet- 
ing-place of the past and future ; or perhaps better, they are 
but negations or limits on either hand of the present. 

As memory is an activity or power of the self which deals 
with what has been, so there must be some activity which shall 
concern itself with what may be. The manifestation of this 
energy of the self is what we call the Imagination. It may be 
denned to be that power of the self through which past con- 
cepts, so modified and combined as to present some new and 
original element, are made to stand out with more or less vivid- 
ness as objects of thought. If past scenes are returned to 
thought simply as they were (if that be possible), it is an act 
of memory ; but as there is always some modification or change 
in the re-presentation of mental states, the imagination plays 
a large part in what is commonly set down as the unaided work 
of memory. Indeed, the functions of the imagination embrace 



THE IMAGINATION. 



127 



the whole scope of mental action. Whatever is thought out as 
an end, in any sense, is new ; and must find its place in the 
sphere of the possible — the ' becoming.' It cannot be memory 
which carries the self on towards and into that which is not yet 
actual, but only possible or beginning to be. This is the work 
of the Imagination. Its importance can hardly be exaggerated. 
There is considerable difference of opinion as to the proper 
classification of the several domains of this power. It should 
seem that a scientific classification would be according to the 
following scheme : — 

SCHEME OF IMAGINATION. 







Economic 


= Causality = 


Understanding 


= Utility. 




Cognitive 






s- 
O 


.5 

a 


Q 


T5 






Rational 


= Causality = 


Pure Reason 


= Truth. 




1- 

3 












f— 1 










{ Painting. 






Artistic 


= Space = 


Vision = 


•< Sculpture. 




Sentient 




T3 

§ 
O 
u 

O 


c 
'3 
S 


Q 


( Architecture 
c 



Rhythmic 



Time = 



Hearing 



Poetry. 
Music. 



By the grand division into ' Cognitive ' and ' Sentient ' Im- 
agination, we cover the two classes which embrace all Knowl- 
edge, Intellect and Feeling. 

The ' Cognitive ' Imagination breaks up into two sub-divis- 
ions, one with causality as its ground, the understanding as its 
proper area, and utility as its end. It may be called, there- 



128 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

fore, the ' Economic ' Imagination. The other has causality 
for its ground, the * pure reason ' for its area, and truth for its 
end. It may be called the * Rational ' Imagination. 

The ' Sentient ' Imagination also breaks up into two sub- 
divisions : first, the ' Artistic,' with space as its ground, vision 
for its domain, and painting, sculpture, and architecture as its 
ends ; second, the ' Rhythmic ' Imagination, with time as its 
ground, the sense of hearing for its domain, with poetry and 
music as its ends. 

Under the ' Economic ' Imagination we class all those activi- 
ties of this power which have the useful in any form for their 
object. It embraces the widest possible range, starting from 
the level of ' every-day's most quiet need,' and rising to the 
highest possible pitch of inventive genius. The whole world 
of mechanical contrivances are its products. Any man who 
proceeds to do a new thing, — new not as unlike what has 
been done before by others, or even by himself, but new in 
that he is striving to cause that to be which otherwise would 
never come into being, is exercising a power which transcends 
the sphere of the actual and deals with the possible. Thus 
the savage who puts together two fagots to start a fire, or 
sharpens a stick for a plough, is an inventor, and in so far 
exercises the economic imagination. Every make-shift, short- 
cut, or contrivance has an element of originality in it, and is a 
protrusion into the future, making that actual which before was 
only possible. The construction of any sentence is an inven- 
tion. Even if the thought be not new, there must be an 
arrangement of words and sentences which is new at least to 
the thinker, and the power which leads to this arrangement is 
neither that which discovers the actual to sense-perception, nor 
brings back the past in memory. It is a movement which 
peers into the future, and strives to evolve reality from the 
potential. The economic imagination has the useful in its 
various forms for its characteristic, — the useful in its broadest 



THE IMAGINATION, 1 29 

sense ; so that all domestic, social, and political aspects of life 
in their practical applications, must depend upon this tran- 
scendent power of the personality as a necessary factor. 

There is still another phase of mental effort, the broadest 
of all in its sweep, which, it should seem, must find its place 
under the economic imagination, and that is the concept-form- 
ing process. The philosophic world has rung with controver- 
sies as to what the content of a concept really is, but without 
entering the arena which has witnessed such valiant feats be- 
tween Realist and Nominalist, we may venture to affirm that 
there is always some sort of shadowy and plastic image floating 
in the mind when a general term, such as 'man,' 'house,' or 
' horse ' is used, and that there is an element of originality in 
its structure. It is now pretty well agreed that there is no 
specific reality answering to such an abstract notion, and that 
it can have no proper image or simulacrum, but the power 
through which it gains whatever belongs to it, must fall under 
the head of the imagination in its sphere of use and necessity. 

What we call the ' Rational Imagination,' is that mental 
capacity through which the evolution of truth as truth is 
evolved, and is founded — as we shall see all thought must 
be — in the fundamental pre- suppositions of what is called the 
Pure Reason. Here we have no longer the mere practical end 
which characterizes the economic imagination, but the motive 
and object is the evolution of truth, as truth. This is the do- 
main of the mathematician, logician, physicist, theologian, and 
philosopher of every name. Every man is compelled to phil- 
osophize in some degree, ranging from cogency to fatuity, and 
so to every man must be conceded some degree of Rational 
Imagination. 

There is one phase of this power much spoken of, but which 
differs in no essential particular from any other phase of the 
rational imagination, and that is what is called the ' Scientific 
Imagination.' That this power is necessary in any real work 



130 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

in science is too obvious to admit of question. D'Alembert 
said iong ago that, to the geometer who invents, the imagi- 
nation is not less essential than to the poet who creates. All 
hypotheses and theories are exemplifications of this constructive 
and original power. Illustrations could be drawn from every 
department of science, and from the humblest to the highest 
worker. Perhaps the most famous example is to be found in 
Kepler, who, by the power of a well-directed imagination, 
guessed out the primary laws of the solar system. 

There might well be made many sub-divisions of the Rational 
Imagination, as well as of the Economic, but it is not neces- 
sary for the purposes in hand. It goes without saying, also, 
that numerous cross- divisions would be necessary to make this 
proposed scheme exhaustive. Indeed, it must be understood 
that the different phases of the imagination must overlap each 
other, and be variously combined ; as, for example, in the 
drama, we have both the artistic and rhythmic phases distinctly 
marked. But we cannot dwell upon this. 

The second great division of this original power which we 
call the 'Sentient Imagination,' covers the domain of what is 
commonly called Esthetics. It also breaks up into two princi- 
pal divisions, one, objective, having a content which is suscep- 
tible of spacial expression, and so of appeal through the eye ; 
and the other, subjective, with time as its ground, and the ear 
as its medium of recognition. 

The ' Artistic Imagination ' is not confined, of course, to the 
actual production of works of art, but includes all such exercise 
of the creative power as might be caught and delineated in 
color, in light and shade, or in plastic form by an artist of suffi- 
cient power. This pictorial power is possessed in vastly varying 
degrees, but there is no one who has it not in some measure. 
The power to recall the look of things implies it, since memory 
is rarely or never able to reproduce a sense-perception in per- 
fectness of details, and these must be supplied by this artistic 



THE IMAGINATION. I3I 

imagination. The whole world of art owes its existence to the 
distinctness with which the painter, the sculptor, and the archi- 
tect is enabled to see in the mind the beauty of form, the 
charm of color, the grace and massiveness and power of his 
ideal, before it is caught in the meshes of the actual. 

The world is not less indebted to the creative power of the 
Rhythmic Imagination. All elevated thought and speech, the 
power and beauty in the numbers of the poet — all arrange- 
ments of language in which originality and grace, sentiment 
and pathos, beauty and sublimity, are found single or combined, 
involve a rhythmic element, which, while not the sole ground, 
cannot be removed without fatal loss. 

In music the rhythmic effect is still further heightened. The 
auxiliary elements which enter poetry through the concept- 
world drop out, and the ear is left free to revel in the possi- 
bilities of infinitely varied numbers. In melody the gradations 
of intervals, and successions of cadence, with endless play, rise 
and swell in adagio or andante sweetness, in the graceful flow 
of the legato, or the clear sharp ring of the staccato movement. 
The power and depth of harmony, the ' concord of sweet 
sounds,' opens a still further world of rhythmic power. 

There is nothing more amazing than the grasp of the imag- 
ination in music. To hear in fancy hundreds of instruments 
and voices, blended and distinct at the same time, and follow 
them through the sweep and crash of, say, a Wagnerian opera, 
requires a power which is bewildering and mysterious. 

Memory and Imagination are intimately related, but quite 
distinct in character. It is the business of memory to repro- 
duce faithfully and servilely the actual ; imagination rises above 
the trammels of dead reality and deals only with the possible. 
Memory speaks only as a witness ; imagination is free, and 
creates for memory to report. Memory is the patient drudge ; 
imagination is the master and lord ; and, like a master, it uses 
the memory at every point. It is the original and creative 



132 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

energy of the self. It is only bound in that it is compelled 
to use the material furnished by memory. It has no power to 
create ab initio. The self cannot imagine a new sensation of 
any sort, — a new perfume, a new tint, or flavor, or any quality 
or power of the actual world. For all these, it must rely upon 
the memory. It has the power, however, to tear apart, and 
recombine and arrange. The result is new, and every effort 
which is a self-determined readjustment of existing concepts, 
is original. The Cyclops and the hippogriff were creations in 
the mind of some genius of antiquity in whose fancy the con- 
ceits first took shape. So with the centaur, the mermaid, the 
dragon, " gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire." These were 
all creations of the human mind ; and yet there is not a single 
sentient element in them all which was not supplied by an act 
of memory. 

But though it must be admitted that this sphere-cleaving 
Pegasus is at the same time a quiet, domestic drudge, working 
by the side of memory, there is still this difference : imagina- 
tion always has its face towards the pregnant future, while the 
memory looks back upon a dead past. 



DREAMING. — SOMNAMBULISM. — HYPNOTISM. 1 33 



CHAPTER XIV. 

DREAMING. SOMNAMBULISM. — HYPNOTISM. 

Phenomenon of Dreaming, Sleep. Do we always dream in sleep? 
The brain a thought-machine. Consciousness a mere phenomenon. The 
brain in sleep. Masso's observations. Character of dreams. Nightmare. 
Somnambulism. Case of student at Amsterdam. Case recorded by Dr. 
Abercrombie. German monk. Muscular feats. Double consciousness. 
Case of young lady at West Point. Hypnotism. Muscular effects. Dr. 
Charcot quoted. ' Suggestions.' 

THERE is perhaps no physio-psychic problem which has 
proved more baffling in all attempts at explanation than 
the phenomenon of Dreaming. It has engaged the attention 
of philosophers from the earliest ages, and has been much dis- 
cussed in the light of modern physiological research ; but it 
still presents many difficulties. 

The question which meets us at the threshold of the inquiry 
is one strictly physiological ; What is sleep ? It seems to be a 
universal phenomenon of animate nature ; and is undoubtedly 
a periodical rest demanded in all vital action. Even the vege- 
table world shows states of repose ; and in the lower animate 
world, as in insects, crustaceans, fishes, and reptiles the motion- 
less state constantly recurring is hardly susceptible of other 
explanation. In birds and the lower mammals, the phenome- 
non admits of no question whatever. That it is a rest of the 
nervous system, with a renewal of the energy expended in the 
hours of wakefulness, seems clear enough ; and the need of 
such refreshment is easily comprehended by man, who finds 
himself fatigued after periods of effort ; but this is a pathologi- 



134 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

cal need read into the phenomenon, and affords no explanation 
whatever. It can hardly be expected that any perfectly satis- 
factory explanation of dream-phenomena will ever be reached 
until physiology can tell us what sleep really is, since dreaming 
is so closely related to this phenomenon. 

The further question presents itself, and has been much dis- 
cussed : Are we, when asleep, always dreaming? Opinion 
seems about equally divided, — at least the names on either 
side are sufficiently famous — the metaphysicians, as a rule, 
holding the affirmative, and the physicists the negative ; — 
Descartes, Leibnitz, Kant, Hamilton, and the a priorists gener- 
ally on one side, and Locke and his followers on the other. In 
the nature of the case, the question can never be fully settled. 
The only witness that can give first-hand testimony is conscious- 
ness itself, and it can answer only from memory : and as there 
are confessedly vast areas about which memory is a blank, it 
can never be finally known whether in those areas there is a 
continuance of consciousness or not. It seems to be certain, 
however, that there are often intervals of consciousness in those 
periods which at first seem blank, since all of us find ourselves 
remembering in the course of the day fragments of dreams of 
which in the morning we had no recollection whatever. It is 
also urged with strong probability, that as during our waking 
periods much goes on of which we are certainly conscious, and 
yet of which, a short time after, we have no recollection, the 
failure of memory to reproduce all dreams is not a sufficient 
reason for denying a continuity of consciousness. Again, it is 
urged that dreams are only the play of cerebral activity in inter- 
vals which are not properly sleep, but of partial wakefulness ; 
and that they may be remembered or not according to the 
vividness of such action. The extreme rapidity with which 
dream-scenes chase each other — as, for example, in the case 
of Lord Holland, who fell asleep while listening to a reader, 
had a long dream, and yet awoke in time to catch the end of 



DREAMING. — SOMNAMBULISM. — HYPNOTISM. I 35 

the sentence begun before sleep overtook him, — makes it pos- 
sible to do any amount of dream-work in very inconsiderable 
periods of partial wakefulness. But the difficulty here is that 
many sleepers are dreaming — even talking and acting while 
profoundly unconscious of everything about them — sleeping 
on though roughly handled, and yet remember nothing of their 
visions, though they make the effort the moment after waking. 
The same thing is seen in the dumb animals. We have all seen 
dogs evidently engaged in the chase while apparently in the 
soundest slumber. 

It is not to be doubted that even in the waking state there 
is a vast area of psychical phenomena which lies out of the 
circle of consciousness. This circle is extremely variable. 
When the attention is sharply fixed the field of consciousness 
is very narrow ; but when there is a rapid change of attention 
from point to point it becomes indefinitely widened ; so that 
there are at all times many reactions in the cerebral hemi- 
spheres which would be knowledge if taken account of by the 
self. The molecular changes which give rise to thought go on 
doubtless in sleep much in the way they do when one is awake, 
except that they are in large degree without purposive 
direction. 

We are, indeed, driven to the conclusion that the cerebral 
hemispheres are simply thought machines. This does not 
mean, however, that the brain thinks : no machine ever does 
anything of itself. A machine is an instrument merely ; and 
the idea of an instrument carries with it necessarily a higher 
power which uses it. For example — a loom is a machine by 
means of which certain materials are woven into a textile fabric : 
but the machine by no means makes the cloth. It does a cer- 
tain work in putting the materials together ; but there are two 
very important factors which it is wholly inadequate to furnish. 
They are, first, the materials wrought upon, and second the 
personal factor by which alone the machine and the materials 



I36 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

are brought together. No mechanism, though carried to the 
utmost limit of perfection, could make cloth. If in the cate- 
gory of its perfections it be demanded that there shall be the 
power to go forth and gather its materials, discriminate as 
to quality, devise the pattern of the fabric and enjoy the pre- 
rogative of conscious self-regulation, the mechanism mani- 
festly ceases to be a mere machine : — it becomes just what is 
meant by personality. Nobody ever yet saw anything done, 
that is, a purposive end accomplished, when he was in the 
secret of the doing, in which he did not know a personal element 
to be present. Iron and brass and wood do not rush together 
and form a steam-engine, but they are consciously combined 
by a thinker ; and so of every possible contrivance. If it be 
answered that this is not true in the processes of nature, the 
obvious reply is that that is the very point in issue : that it is a 
pure assumption, in the face of all analogy, that there is no 
thought power by which its processes are directed. 

In granting, therefore, that the neural mechanism in its 
highest form is a thought producer, the necessity for the 
material of thought (stimuli), and the presence of the operator 
(ego) must be presupposed. Now in many of the cunningly 
devised machines, the material having been selected and 
placed, it is possible for the operator to turn his back for a 
time, or even attend to something else quite different from the 
mechanical work, while it goes on perfectly well. This seems 
to be the case with all the reflex or automatic activity of the 
human mechanism in which at the beginning attention was 
necessary ; but which, after being rightly set, goes on meas- 
urably well, even better sometimes without attention than 
with it. 

Now it is hardly to be questioned that in the human thought 
mechanism changes and modifications are constantly taking 
place far below the threshold of cognition, and especially must 
this be the case in the silence of sleep. It is doubtless due to 



DREAMING. — SOMNAMBULISM. — HYPNOTISM. 1 37 

this fact that perplexing questions which have been under- 
going a mental discussion within us, and have been left in an 
unsettled state before going to bed at night, appear to us in the 
morning, after an undisturbed rest, in a clear and decided light. 
Concepts have been brought together and arranged by the 
apperceiving power, which is an ever-active propulsion of our 
cognitive nature, and the result is a clearing up of what before 
was uncertainty and confusion. Cases of such unconscious 
cerebration must have fallen within the experience of every- 
body. 

If what has already been said on the subject of the neces- 
sary co-action of the imagination in arriving at any conclusion 
be true, this cognitive power must have exerted an energy in 
such cases as these ; and there can be no just ground for 
denying large possibilities to its action. Such action is what 
we call dreaming. If the repose is complete, there is no rec- 
ollection of what may have gone on ; but the activity of the 
neural centres may be so energetic as to force upon the sleeper 
a quasi, or even vivid recognition of its activity ; and this the 
memory may reproduce with greater or less distinctness, either 
immediately upon waking, or after an interval of time. 

This explanation implies, first, that consciousness is by no 
means the self, nor the distinguishing and essential charac- 
teristic of the personality — that is, consciousness in its fully 
developed, or cognitive form. But this must be true, else the 
personality would suffer absolute and fatal breaks in its con- 
tinuity; indeed, would be, not an entity at all, but a mere 
state or phenomenon, — consciousness itself being the witness. 
For in a state of coma, in swoons, in dreamless (so far as known 
to one's self) sleep, in the antenatal state one is compelled to 
confess complete blanks, so far as consciousness can testify. 
It is for this reason that we hold consciousness to be a phe- 
nomenon of personality, and have called it the illuminated 
circle of cognition. The thought- mechanism may be in a state 



I38 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

of perfect suspension, in which case there can be no conscious- 
ness whatever, or it may go on, and yet not come within the 
field of conscious recognition ; and in this case there is no 
consciousness of such mechanical action. 

The second point is this — attention is active and implies 
energy. In the state of relaxation and repose which we call 
sleep, the conative powers lack direction and control ; that is 
to say, the will is, so to speak, off duty or asleep. This is a 
most important and significant point. It must be remembered, 
as we have seen already, that the functions of the will are not 
only to promote thought and action by concentrating attention 
and directing movements, but that an equally important part 
of its work is inhibitory. Indeed, it must be apparent, that 
but for this inhibitory power, recently discovered by physiolo- 
gists, there would be inextricable confusion, even to chaos, in 
cerebral action. This power, in a way not yet fully under- 
stood, lays its hand, so to speak, on the vibratory chords in the 
encephalic organ to silence and prevent their action. The fact 
of the existence of such a factor in the neural system goes far 
to confirm the independence of the personality, and its suprem- 
acy over the mechanism which nature has furnished for its 
objective manifestations. If it were the brain-mechanism alone 
which gives thought and activity, then no management ought 
to be discoverable : that is to say, resuming our illustration of 
the machine, there could be found no room for the presence 
and control of the operator. 

There are certain other facts, recently brought to light by 
physiologists, which have an important bearing on this general 
question. Passing over the work done by others, among the 
latest and most thorough observations are those of Mosso. He 
made observations on three persons who had lost portions of 
the cranial vault leaving the brain exposed, protected only by 
a soft pulsating cicatrix — a man and a woman each thirty- 
seven years old, and a child of twelve. He succeeded in 



DREAMING. SOMNAMBULISM. HYPNOTISM. I 39 

taking simultaneous tracings of the pulse at the wrist, of the 
beat of the heart, of the movement of the chest, and of the 
exposed brain. He showed that during sleep there is a dimin- 
ished amount of blood in the brain, and an increased amount 
in the extremities. He showed, further, that there are frequent 
adjustments in the distribution of the blood during sleep, and 
that this distribution is easily affected by external stimuli, — 
thus, a stimulus to the organs of sense caused a contraction of 
the vessels of the forearm, an increase of blood pressure, and 
a determination of blood to the brain ; and on suddenly awak- 
ening the sleeper, there was a contraction of the vessels of the 
brain, a general rise of pressure, and an accelerated flow of 
blood through the hemispheres. During sleep, a loudly spoken 
word, a sound, a touch, the action of light, or any moderate 
sensory impression modified the rhythm of respiration, quick- 
ened the heart beats, and caused an increased flow of blood to 
the brain. He found that during very sound sleep these oscil- 
lations disappear : that the pulsatory movements are regular, 
and not affected by sensory impressions. 

Three periodic movements of the brain during sleep are 
fairly certain: (1) pulsations corresponding to the beats of 
the heart; (2) oscillations of longer period, carrying smaller 
waves, thought in a general way, to correspond to the respira- 
tory movements, and (3) undulations, still longer, thought by 
Mosso to indicate rhythmic contractions of the vessels of the 
membrane (pia mater) which covers the brain. It seems 
certain, therefore, that during sleep there is a comparatively 
bloodless condition of the brain. An examination of the retina 
by the opthalmascope during sleep, shows the same thing. Thus 
it can hardly be doubted that at least one of the physiological 
reasons for dreamless sleep is a depleted condition of the 
brain, with a diminished stimulation, and on the other hand, 
for the active dream state, the continuance of blood in the 
vascular system of the brain, or its return, from one cause or 
another after sleep has set in. 



140 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

While dreams are sometimes coherent and sensible, they are, 
as a rule, full of incongruities, and even impossibilities, as pre- 
sented to the judgment by memory. They present every pos- 
sible variety between order and delirium. There are notable 
cases on record of vigorous thought-processes carried on dur- 
ing sleep. Condorcet tells us that the solution of a problem 
he had labored over for some time ineffectually was worked out 
for him in a dream ; Condillac declares that subjects which 
occupied his thoughts upon retiring were continued successfully 
while asleep ; and Coleridge has given us a fragment of a 
dream-poem — Kubla-Khan — which he remembered upon 
waking from a sleep in his chair. These are among the most 
celebrated ; but most people have had experiences not unlike 
these, though perhaps more modest in degree. Such cases of 
method and coherency seem to follow close upon trains of ideas 
prosecuted vigorously in waking hours, and the fair presump- 
tion is that the power of directing the dream-imagery in some 
low degree at least is still active. 

These cases, however, are altogether exceptional. It more 
often happens that one wakes with a vivid impression of some 
wonderful dream thought, poem, invention, or argument, which 
under the ' dry-light ' of the understanding proves to be a 
' baseless fabric' 

The ' stuff that dreams are made of ' is usually very queer, 
sadly lacking in coherence and cogency. Assuming the direct- 
ing and inhibitory power to be dormant, while the brain-cells 
are in a state of activity, presenting to consciousness the mate- 
rial of thought without system and arrangement, the most fan- 
tastic and grotesque results are accounted for. The living and 
the dead would commingle, as we know they do in dreams, 
and that without the least incongruity to a power which, in it- 
self, has nothing to do but take note of what is presented. 
There can be no absurdity, no moral quality, no surprise, so 
long as the understanding is inactive ; and it should seem to 



DREAMING. — SOMNAMBULISM. — HYPNOTISM. I4I 

be for this reason that even time and space forms are so con- 
stantly set at naught in dreams. 

But yet it often happens in dream fantasies that some 
question as to the reality of the scenes presented arises in 
consciousness ; as, for example, when one has a dream within 
a dream. Some years ago, if I may give my own experience, 
I dreamed that in making some excavations for the foundation 
of a building, a little negro boy, about twelve years old, was 
dug up alive and in perfect health. It was such a remarkable 
event that it excited great attention; and a number of gentle- 
men (so the dream went) set to work to investigate the phe- 
nomenon. The boy was put through a series of questions; 
and, as he had been buried before the late war, then happily 
over, he was experimented upon, in his ignorance of the changed 
relations, to test his memory and witness his surprise at the 
new order of things. It all seemed so extraordinary, that I 
(the dreamer), suspected the whole thing to be a dream ; and 
accordingly went out on the street, and looked about to see 
if everything was natural, — spoke to several acquaintances, 
asked them whether I was awake or asleep, and, having thor- 
oughly assured myself that I was fully awake, went back to 
resume the interesting investigation. 

In this case it should seem that it was not really the under- 
standing which suggested the doubt, nor to which the test was 
submitted ; but that it was simply a fancied or imaginary 
understanding, and so of a piece with all the rest of the scene. 

In what is called ' nightmare ' the dream-state is complicated 
by more or less futile attempts at muscular activity, with a 
sense of horrible inability to escape some fancied bondage or 
impending danger. When the movement is a part of the dream 
proper, and remains purely imaginary, the motor nerves seem 
not to be affected, though in the case of the vocal powers they 
often really act without any sense of oppression. Many people, 
especially children, talk in their sleep ; and it is sometimes the 



142 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

case that sleepers will answer questions put to them, with a 
certain degree of freedom. Indeed, it is not impossible to 
direct the current of dreams to some extent by stimuli judi- 
ciously applied, the reason for which is obvious enough from 
what has been already said. 

In the phenomena of somnambulism we have a more pro- 
nounced phase of psychical and muscular action combined. 
The cognitive powers remain clear in certain particulars, and 
the motor action seems unusually perfect, while sense-percep- 
tion, except in certain special phases, seems quite suspended. 
Talking in sleep is an incipient form of somnambulism ; but in 
its developed form the sleeper rises, dresses himself, enters 
upon the execution of some purpose, often of a delicate and 
complicated character ; and finally returns to bed, and in the 
morning has no recollection of his doings, except, perhaps, as a 
mere dream. Cases are on record of persons who have per- 
formed all sorts of acts in sleep ; as of mechanics who have 
got up, and gone on with their ordinary work ; musicians who 
have shown higher powers than they possessed in their waking 
moments, — the voice sweeter and more powerful, the instru- 
mentation more firm and delicate. One man was known to 
saddle his horse, and ride to his market-place, miles away. 

The somnambule possesses sense-perceptions, or, at least, 
powers of external recognition, which are wholly unknown to 
us in our waking hours. For example, there is some power 
which seems to take the place of sight. Dr. Carpenter tells us 
of the case of a student at Amsterdam, to whom a difficult 
calculation had been submitted by his mathematical professor. 
He had toiled at it for three nights in succession ; and on the 
last night had been compelled to retire without reaching a 
successful issue, his candle having burnt Out, with no other in 
reach. Upon rising in the morning, he was distressed at the 
thought of again disappointing his professor, who expected him 
to accomplish the solution, when, on approaching his table, he 



DREAMING. SOMNAMBULISM. HYPNOTISM. 1 43 

found the problem fully solved in his own handwriting, and in 
what turned out to be a new and shorter way than before 
known ; and all this he had done in the dark. 

Dr. Abercrombie recites the case of an eminent person who, 
having been consulted in a difficult matter, studied it deeply 
for several days without arriving at definite conclusions. His 
wife saw him rise in the night, go to the writing-desk, in the 
same room, and write a long paper, carefully fold and put it 
away in the desk. In the morning he told his wife that he 
had had a remarkable dream, — had dreamed that he had 
delivered a clear and voluminous opinion in the case which had 
perplexed him for days, and that he would give anything to 
recover the train of thought. She directed him to the desk, 
where he found the opinion fully written out. 

A case is on record of a young monk in Germany, whose 
work during the day was that of a scrivener. He often rose 
in his sleep and went on with his work. Divers experiments 
were tried upon him. Among other things a screen was inter- 
posed between his eyes and his manuscript while writing, and 
was found to make no sort of difference. He kept the right 
spaces perfectly, and dotted his ' i's ' and crossed his ' t's ' with 
his usual accuracy. Indeed, the sense of sight seems not to be 
used by the somnambule. The eye is dull, and sometimes shut, 
and yet in walking, obstacles are avoided perfectly, although 
they are newly placed, as, for example, a chair put in front of 
the sleep-walker as he advances. 

The muscular feats performed by somnambulists are equally 
unaccountable. Persons in this abnormal state seem to have 
no sense of danger, clambering out of windows, and walking 
on the narrowest ledges at giddy heights without the least sign 
of caution. They constantly do what they could not in a nor- 
mal state. I may mention a case in point which has always 
puzzled me. When a lad I occupied the same room with a. 
younger brother • he was about twelve years old. Upon enter- 



144 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

ing the room one night I found him in his night-clothes, 
stretched at full length on the mantel shelf, with some books 
for a pillow. The shelf was quite narrow, and about up to his 
chin ; how he got up I never could make out. There was no 
sign of chair or other thing to assist him. When I spoke to 
him he quietly landed on his feet and jumped into bed. 

Another marvellous fact is that somnambulists sometimes 
have a sort of double consciousness, — in their waking state 
living one life, in their somnambulic state another, with an 
orderly sequence and coherence. This presents itself in many 
degrees and phases. Perhaps the most curious example is in the 
case preserved by Dr. Abercrombie in his " Intellectual Pow- 
ers," of a young lady at West Point. The affection began with 
an attack of somnolency which was protracted much beyond the 
usual time. " When she came out of it, she was found to have 
lost every kind of acquired knowledge. She immediately began 
to apply herself to the first elements of education, and was mak- 
ing considerable progress, when, after several months, she was 
seized with a second attack of somnolency. She was now at once 
restored to all the knowledge which she possessed before the 
first attack, but without the least recollection of anything that 
had taken place during the interval. After another interval 
she had a third attack of somnolency, which left her in the 
same state as after the first. In this manner she suffered these 
alternate conditions for a period of four years, with the very 
remarkable circumstance that during the one state she retained 
all her original knowledge ; but during the other, that only 
which she had acquired since the first attack. During the 
healthy period, for example, she was remarkable for the beauty 
of her penmanship, but during the paroxysm wrote a poor, 
awkward hand. Persons introduced to her during the par- 
oxysm, she recognized only in a subsequent paroxysm, but not 
in the interval ; and persons whom she had seen for the first 
time during the healthy interval, she did not recognize during 
the attack." 



DREAMING. SOMNAMBULISM. HYPNOTISM. I45 

It is not to be disputed that there is much so far unex- 
plained in the somnambulic phenomena. Indeed it is but one 
of a number of classes, of psychical as well as physical phe- 
nomena still remaining in the domain of mystery. 

Another very remarkable state, first called, in modern times, 
Mesmerism, and later Animal Magnetism, Electro-Biology, etc., 
but now almost universally known as Hypnotism (from vVvos, 
sleep), is clearly allied to that of Somnambulism. Its present 
name was given it by Dr. Braid, of Manchester, who, in 1841, 
set out to show the Mesmeric craze, then extant in England, 
to be founded in fraud and delusion ; but he soon found that 
it had an extraordinary psychic truth at bottom. He stripped 
it of the magical and magnetic elements, by showing that the 
artificial or pseudo-sleep could be induced in the simplest pos- 
sible manner without passes, or magnets, or darkened cham- 
bers. His method — which still prevails — was to cause the 
subject to gaze fixedly upon some bright object held at from 
ten to fifteen inches from the eyes and a little elevated : in a 
short time the pupils begin to relax, the eyelids become un- 
steady, then close, or if they do not, the operator, marking the 
change which comes over the subject's expression, closes them 
with a gentle pressure of his finger, at the same time quietly 
stroking the brow or cheeks. A good subject, after having 
been hypnotized a number of times, may be put to sleep by 
gazing a moment at the point of the operator's finger, or by a 
look, or, as it is asserted, by a mere effort of will on the part 
of the operator. It is necessary as a rule that the operator 
shall have the good-will of the subject ; but Dr. Charcot asserts, 
in a late number of The Forum, that he has often succeeded 
in surprising unwilling patients into the hypnotic state by sud- 
denly disclosing an electric or magnesium light, and also by 
the use of a very large tuning-fork operated by an electro- 
magnet, gradually brought up to its full intensity, or by the 
sudden bang of a gong. He says, however, that these methods 



I46 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

are not always successful • and it seems that the patients experi- 
mented upon were of a peculiar hysterical character. 

Hypnotized patients lose almost all independence of will, and 
the imagination is in an analogous condition to that of the 
dream state. They obey any order, or suggestion of the oper- 
ator, almost as if they were mere machines, and believe any- 
thing told them however absurd or ridiculous. Even the 
senses seem to undergo temporary change. They will eat or 
drink anything, however unpalatable, with apparent relish, if 
only told that it is something ordinarily enjoyable. A stick put 
into a patient's hands becomes a snake at the suggestion of the 
(Operator, and he drops it, and starts back with fright : a bundle 
of rags becomes an infant, and he fondles and caresses it : he 
will bestride a chair and go through all the motions of riding a 
horse, — nothing is too ridiculous ; and even all sense of de- 
cency and honesty seem lost. 

An extraordinary class of muscular effects is produced. A 
perfect rigidity or relaxation of a muscle or a set of muscles, or 
even of the whole body, can be induced by the operator. The 
arm or leg may be made absolutely inflexible, — the eyes fixed 
upon the ceiling in such a prolonged and constrained position 
as would be impossible in a normal state ; the patient being 
left for an indefinite time gazing like a statue ; or, the body in 
a state of rigidity may be ' laid like a log, head and heels on 
two chairs, so stiff and rigid as to bear the weight of the oper- 
ator sitting upon him.' The patient may be kept for hours in 
the hypnotic state, and then roused by a series of passes, or by 
holding him a moment and blowing gently in the face. 

There are still further marvels of this abnormal trance-like 
state. Says Dr. Charcot : " Take one example among a thou- 
sand. I present a woman patient in the hypnotic state a blank 
leaf of paper, and say to her : ' Here is my portrait ; what do 
you think of it — is it a good likeness ? ' After a moment's 
hesitation she answers, ' Yes indeed, your photograph ; will you 



DREAMING. — SOMNAMBULISM. — - HYPNOTISM. I47 

give it to me? ' To impress deeply in the mind of the subject 
that imaginary portrait, I point my finger toward one of the 
four sides of the square leaf of paper, and tell her that my 
profile looks in that direction ; I describe my clothing. The 
image being now fixed in her mind, I take the leaf of paper, 
and mix it with a score of other leaves precisely like it. I then 
hand the whole pack to the patient, bidding her go over them, 
and let me know if she finds among them anything she has 
seen before. She begins to look at the leaves one after an- 
other, and as soon as her eyes fall upon the one first shown her 
(I have made a mark upon it which she could not discover), 
forthwith she exclaims : ' Look — your portrait.' What is more 
curious still, if I turn the leaf over, as soon as her eyes rest 
upon it, she turns it up, saying my photograph is on the 
obverse. I then convey to her the order that she shall con- 
tinue to see the portrait on the blank paper, even after the 
hypnosis has passed. Then I waken her, and again hand to 
her the pack of papers, requesting her to look over them. She 
handles them just as before when she was hypnotized, and 
utters the same exclamation, ' Look — your portrait.' If now 
I tell her she may retire, she returns to her dormitory, and her 
first care will be to show to her companions the photograph I 
have given her. Of course her companions not having received 
the suggestion will see only a blank leaf of paper without any 
trace whatever of a portrait ; and will laugh at our subject and 
treat her as a visionary. Furthermore, this suggestion, this 
hallucination, will, if I wish, continue several days ; all I have 
to do is to express the wish to the patient before awakening 
her." 

Here the marvellous point is the recognition of the particu- 
lar leaf out of a number entirely like it, and that so perfectly 
as to be able to turn it always so as to keep the imaginary 
photograph on the same side, and right side up. But, as Dr. 
Charcot says, we need not on this account call in any preter- 



I48 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

natural agency ; a sharpening of the powers of sense, however, 
must be admitted ; there can be no doubt that every bit of 
paper differs widely from every other, however like it may 
appear to our senses in a normal condition, and it is only fair 
to assume that the sensibilities in their abnormal state are 
able to note these differences. By what sense this is accom- 
plished it is impossible to say, but there are facts which entirely 
warrant us in the conviction that at least the sense of smell is 
wonderfully sharpened — almost transformed. Thus, Dr. Car- 
penter says, that he has known a youth in the hypnotic state, 
to find out the owner of a glove placed in his hand, in a com- 
pany of sixty, by the sense of smell, — scenting at each of 
them until he came to the right person. In another case, the 
owner of a ring was unhesitatingly found out, from among a 
company of twelve ; the ring having been withdrawn from the 
finger before the patient was introduced. He also says that 
he has seen cases in which the sense of temperature was ex- 
traordinarily exalted. The increased delicacy and power of the 
sense of sight in the somnambulic state has been already 
spoken of. 

It should seem that in the case of a hypnotic patient the will 
of the operator is in a large degree substituted for the will of 
the patient, and that the whole mechanism of the personality 
is under his domination. It is a dream-state, in which the 
suggestions of the operator are substituted for the chance stim- 
uli which affect the sleeper. The most remarkable fact is that 
suggestions may be made to affect the patient hours, or even 
days after being relieved from the hypnotic state. 



THE UNDERSTANDING. I49 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE UNDERSTANDING. 

A technical phase of Cognition. Faculty of Relations. Thought 
proper. The lower animals. Pain. Logical element in man. The Syl- 
logism. Dictum of Aristotle. Deductive and Inductive Methods. Re- 
ciprocal processes. Hypotheticals. 

LIKE all other activities of the self the ' understanding ' 
is easily distinguishable after it has reached a tolerable 
state of development ; but as we trace our way back towards 
the first elements of knowledge, its functions necessarily grow 
less and less distinct, until it, with all other self-modes, sinks 
back into its source and ground, the personality. 

The understanding, however, is discoverable at the very 
threshold of consciousness, and is always present in any act or 
mode of conscious self-energy. It is the thought power, — 
the instrument of all knowing ; and can only itself be known 
in the ' empirical ego,' through its own function of distinguish- 
ing itself from the other two co-ordinate and necessary modes 
of the ' self,' sensibility and will. Sensibility is not sensibility, 
volition is not volition in the sphere of consciousness, until 
revealed to us through the understanding. 

It must be borne in mind that thought or cognition has a 
wider scope than 'understanding' in its technical sense, — that 
sense-perception, memory, and imagination all fall under the 
head of the cognitive energy. 

When, however, the understanding has become sufficiently 
differentiated for recognition, we discover it to be the Faculty 
of Relations. Through its office the self notes consciously the 



I50 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

likeness or difference between two concepts brought together 
for comparison by the conative power. We must distinguish 
between it, and the energy which brings the concepts together 
for comparison. Its business is to comprehend, — to see and 
note the congruence or incongruence of the concepts as pre- 
sented. It deals with relations simply as facts, and has no 
power to change jot or tittle. It sees, if so be, that one stick 
is longer than another, that one weight is heavier than another, 
that the centre is within the circle, that the radii are equal, and 
any and all other relations which lie within its scope. It is not 
omniscient nor infallible ; that is, it does not discover to us 
all the relations which subsist between the concepts compared, 
nor is it always right with regard to those upon which atten- 
tion is directed. The number and nature of those discovered, 
and the accuracy of the result depend upon the degree of ex- 
cellence in the particular understanding of the person exercis- 
ing it. 

It may be well to remind the reader that all this lies in the 
ideal world. The sticks as objects in the external world are 
not, and can never be, compared. The comparison is between 
the two ideas in the mind. Even if the two sticks are laid 
alongside each other, this is no comparison. They might lie 
so forever, and there would never be any comparison until the 
perceptions of them in the self-world are judged of by the 
understanding. The truth of the concepts themselves, and 
the clearness of their relation determine the excellence of the 
result. In other words the amount of mental energy of which 
any particular person is capable, and the effort he puts forth at 
the moment determine the worth of any judgment. The differ- 
ence between any concept — itself a result of the apperceiving 
power — and a judgment, which is the result of comparing 
one particular concept with another, is clearly one of degree 
only. Into the concept, there have gone many conclusions of 
the rudimentary understanding. They have lost all traces, per- 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 151 

haps, of the individual acts which, in a quasi or subconscious 
way, have entered into their composition, and are now concrete 
wholes ; but these primary acts of comparison were unquestion- 
ably the work of the same power which we now in its developed 
state call the understanding. Apperception and understanding 
are therefore essentially the same thing. All knowledge is the 
result of this power of judging. The relations of the actual, 
whether with or without physical basis originally, are the dis- 
covery of the apperceiving power ; and when so discovered they 
are committed to the conserver of facts, the memory. These 
residual judgments, explicit and distinct, are constantly merged 
into other and new wholes, which are nothing more than higher 
concepts, and are committed to the memory in a new sign or 
name, as, ' home,' ' business,' ' government,' etc. This process 
never ends. 

There is this difference to be noted, however. So long as 
the actual mergence is not accomplished, of course the new 
concept is not formed. When I say A is B, the A and the B 
stand out in their individuality ; and although the content in 
the proposition is their agreement in thought, there is a con- 
stant play of the understanding through the conative energy, 
between the two extremes ; and so long as this is true, it is not 
a concept proper, but a judgment. 

We can proceed one step further in the process of building 
up knowledge. When judgments are brought together and dis- 
covered to have a ground of agreement, the conclusion must 
itself be a judgment, with subject and predicate, so long as the 
judgments stand distinct before the mind : but when they are 
1 arrested,' and sink out of sight, a long step is taken toward a 
residual concept which shall absorb the terms of the conclusion 
as well. 

Thinking, in its usual acceptation, is the process of judging, 
and does not emerge in consciousness until after a large accu- 
mulation of elementary knowledge. From what has just been 



152 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. ' 

said, as well as from the whole trend of what has gone before, it 
must clearly appear that thinking, in this sense, is a very differ- 
ent thing from the all pervading thought power which we have 
seen to be fundamental in character. Knowledge of a low 
order thus precedes thinking proper. 

In the elementary stages of knowing there is no conscious 
effort in the concept forming process. The action is carried on 
through the propulsion of a life power — an instinct of the per- 
sonality which blindly propels the self forward until it has gained 
the power of self-direction. 

Thinking, then, in this sense has in it a larger element of the 
will power, a greater effort of attention, than is found in the 
lower stages of knowing. Perhaps in a right sense, elemen- 
tary knowledge can hardly be called thoughts. It affects the 
mind rather in a sensuous than in an ideal way. There is no 
power yet of abstraction, and so there are not yet any ideas 
proper. Everything is concrete, and the personality is controlled 
as if pushed or pulled from without ; and yet we must recog- 
nize the inchoate cognitive element all through it. 

Thinking, then, really begins for us, when the conscious effort 
of comparing concepts for purposes of judging emerges in us. 
There must be two conspicuous factors, the differentiated power 
of abstraction and the conscious effort of judging. 

In this light, we can now answer, in a manner, the question 
everybody is asking : ' Do not the lower animals think ? ' Man- 
ifestly not, in this only right sense of thinking. They seem to 
have neither of these two necessary factors, — the power of 
holding a concept in its differentiated aspect as an act of con- 
sciousness, nor of exerting the conscious effort of comparison. 
They undoubtedly know many things, and they perform many 
acts which have the look of discrimination ; but their knowl- 
edge lingers in the sphere of automatic determinism, and is to 
them as the push and pull of a power without and beyond 
them ; and their apparent discrimination is the result upon 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 153 

them of this propulsion. The dog knows his master, but he 
does not know him as master. He looks to him for food, and 
even protection ; but it is a sensuous knowledge far down in 
the region of sense-perception, as a smell, as a pleasing or a 
disagreeable effect of heat, or light. He shows evidences of 
gratification at the master's presence and pines and mopes in 
his absence ; but it is probably of no higher character than is 
involved in his drawing near the fire for comfort, or withdraw- 
ing from it when too hot. The sight of a stick, if it has been 
the instrument of punishment in the hands of the master, causes 
him to cringe ■ and a gun, if he is a sporting animal, fills him 
with gladness. But of pain as pain, in any construed conscious- 
ness, or joy as an emotion, he knows nothing. 

The whole life of the animal is largely, if not wholly, auto- 
matic. The apparent judgments which we so often witness 
are not the results of conscious reflection, but of the prevalence 
of the strongest impulsion at the moment. The dog is far 
from reaching the stage of conscious personality. There is no 
true reasoning, and this seems to be the necessary conclusion 
upon physiological grounds. Those creatures which show the 
highest power of adapting means to ends are those, not of 
advanced brain development, but of the lowest order. There 
is no comparison between the community life, and the con- 
structive power of the ant or the bee, and that of the horse 
or dog ; yet the differentiation of the higher nerve-cells of the 
brain in these is far beyond what it is in those. 

Pain in the lower animals is a very different thing from what 
it is in man. There being no conscious personality, and no 
reflection, there can be no self-pity, and no construing of the 
physical derangement, which is properly only pain, when trans- 
lated into thought. They show all the effects of pain as we 
know it, but so does one often under the influence of anaesthet- 
ics. The extraction of a tooth under chloroform is frequently 
accompanied by howls of apparent agony and exclamations 



154 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

pitiful to hear; but the dentist goes quietly about his work 
with no emotion or sympathy, because he knows the patient 
does not feel it. 

If the animal world had the power of forming judgments and 
the capacity for self-knowledge, there would be no reason why 
they should not proceed to form language and to show an 
advance in the rational scale. It is not from the lack of the 
physical organs, as witness the parrot and all that class of birds ; 
but it may be seriously questioned whether any bird ever 
attached the slightest meaning to words, though as clearly 
articulated as in human speech. But even if the tones of the 
human voice could not be simulated by the dog, for example, 
language could as certainly be composed of barks and howls. 

It perhaps will be urged in objection, that animals do com- 
municate with each other ; — and undoubtedly they do ; and 
those, let it be remembered again, of lowest powers do it 
most thoroughly. But this is not language in the human sense, 
any more than the solicitations of appetite or the reflex action 
in the leg of a decapitated frog are the results of thought. It 
is all in the domain of sense, meeting with perfect response, 
but not through the construing power. 

Again, it is to be doubted whether any animal has ever been 
known to do a voluntary act in which judgment proper can be 
discovered. In the ape-tribe we should expect to find it if any- 
where, but they fail to exhibit it. The dog or the ape will 
freeze to death before either of them will replenish a fire. The 
fuel may be at hand, the animal may have seen it put on the 
fire a thousand times, may have actually put it on itself, if so 
taught, and yet when it is to be done for a purpose, the animal 
never rises to the necessary height. If putting the fuel on the 
fire were the immediate cause of the heat, they doubtless 
would do it. They will open gates of intricate construction, 
and even show by their motions that they want their masters 
to do acts for them which they are unable to perform ; but 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 155 

they must be acts which carry, or seem to carry the end with 
it. A dog with a bit of meat on a shelf too high for him to 
reach will starve, with the full knowledge that the food is there, 
before he will push a chair into position to enable him to reach 
it. This is too large a demand upon his construing power, or, 
perhaps, appeals to a power which he has not. It may be well 
to say, however, that all this is a mere question of fact, and that 
there need be no hesitancy in admitting, if the facts should 
warrant it, that dumb creatures have this construing or concept- 
forming power in at least a rudimentary form. 

This logical power is discoverable in the lowest orders of 
men, and reaches, in ascending stages of development, to the 
highest. The boor or the savage who never heard the word 
' logic ' is a logician, inasmuch as he forms judgments, and 
exercises the power of self-determination in the light of con- 
scious reflection. The whole world went on, and achieved 
astonishing results in art, in literature, and in architecture, 
waged skilful wars, and solved high problems in civil polity, 
before Aristotle discovered, and laid bare to the conscious 
thought of man, the laws of this mighty instrumentality. The 
highest analytical feat ever performed by the wit of man, per- 
haps, was his discovery and systematic statement of the laws 
of logical thinking. Very little has ever been added to the 
science of logic since it came full fledged from the hand of the 
Stagirite. The power is one thing • the explicit consciousness 
is quite another. 

Though we can but glance at the subject, some considera- 
tion of the principles underlying the science of logic is abso- 
lutely necessary to understand the further evolution of the 
knowledge-forming process. 

An argument formally stated is called a ' syllogism.' It 
consists of three propositions, two of them called ' premises,' 
and the third the ' conclusion.' The subject of the conclusion, 
that is, the concept of which something is declared, and com- 



156 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

monly standing first, is called the ' minor term ' ; the predicate, 
or that which is declared of the subject, is called the ' major 
term.' One of the premises must contain the major, and the 
other the minor term, and they are called, respectively, the 
major and minor premise. The third concept entering the argu- 
ment is called the ' middle term ' and must enter both the 
premises. The middle term is thus the common ground upon 
which both the other concepts in the argument must stand 
wholly or in part, and these concepts must thus agree, in so 
far as they overlap in this process. 

Let us take a simple concrete example : — 

All animals are mortal [major premise]. 
All men are animals [minor premise] . 
Therefore, all men are mortal [conclusion]. 

In the major premise the whole class, ' animals,' is declared 
to fall under a larger notion, 'mortal' (major term), and in 
the minor premise ' men ' (minor term) is declared to fall 
under that notion which is itself contained in the major term : 
it follows, therefore, necessarily, that the minor is contained in 
the major term. 

This may be made readily apparent to the eye. Take three 
circles, thus : — 




The largest circle is the major term (mortal), and contains 
the middle (animals), and this contains the minor (men) ; so 



THE UNDERSTANDING. I 57 

that the minor term is necessarily contained in the major. 
This is a necessity of thought, and may be expressed generally 
thus : A part of a part is a part of the whole. This is in brief 
phrase the positive side of what is known as the Dictum of 
Aristotle. The Dictum itself — called the Dictum de o?nni et 
nullo — may be thus expressed : ' Whatever is predicated {i.e. 
affirmed or denied) universally of any class {i.e. of any whole) 
may be also predicated of any part of that class.' 

To the test of this dictum, all deductive reasoning must at 
last submit ; and a part of the business of logic is to show how 
this, test may be made to apply in all the possible forms an 
argument may assume. 

In every argument there are two things to be noted, the 
' form ' and the ' matter.' By the form is meant all that is left 
after the content of the concepts is removed, the concrete 
meaning of the concepts being the matter. In our example, 
we have in the concept ' men,' a fasciculus of knowledge which 
has grown up in the empirical ego out of a multitude of experi- 
ences ■ and so in the other two concepts. Now, it may or 
may not be true that ' all animals are mortal ' ; or that ' all 
men afe animals.' If we take out of these propositions all that 
is contingent (the matter) there will still be left the declara- 
tive element, and we shall have ' Something is Something,' or, 
'Anything is Anything.' Let A be the symbol of anything, 
with the condition that it shall always remain the same when- 
ever it may appear in the same argument ; and B and C be 
symbols of like character. Substituting these in our example 
above, we have : — 

All A is B. 

All C is A. 

Therefore, all C is B. 

We have now eliminated all question of the truth or falsity 
of the declaration in the premises depending upon the matter 
of the concepts themselves, and have left the bare form of the 
proposition. 



158 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

The conclusion now not only follows necessarily from the 
premises, but is indisputably true. In the concrete example, 
the conclusion, 'All men are mortal,' followed apodictically 
from the premises ; but might nevertheless be false, because 
one or other of the premises might not, as a matter of fact, be 
true. Thus the formal syllogism in any of its various forms 
established as valid by the science of pure logic, gives indis- 
putable conclusions ; but as an empty form establishes nothing : 
the concepts must be restored in the argument before it is of 
any practical use. 

We must thus have in every real argument the two factors, 
form and matter. The conclusion may be false, either from 
the fact that its particular form is not valid, or that one or 
both of the premises are materially false. 

Pure, or Formal Logic looks only to the form, and has 
nothing to do with the matter. The truth of any premise is a 
question for Practical Logic ; and at this door steps in the 
whole circle of the sciences. The question of the truth or 
falsity of the proposition, ' All men are mortal,' can only be 
answered by the science of biology. So in any proposition. 
Only Astronomy can tell us whether it is true that ' Jupiter is 
still in a semi-fluid state ' ; and we shall have to appeal to 
Chemistry to know the truth of the proposition, ' Water is 
composed of oxygen and hydrogen ' ; and so of all questions 
depending upon experience. 

Now syllogistic reasoning is deductive in character ; that is, 
it starts with a sumption (major premise), and the office of the 
.$7/^- sumption (minor premise) is to declare that a certain 
subject falls under that sumption, or general rule ; and the con- 
clusion follows deductively. We thus descend from the gen- 
eral to the particular. The sciences arrive at their conclusions 
in a directly contrary way. They ascend from the particular 
to the general. They begin by noting a fact, and then another 
of like character, and so on until finally the number of accord- 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 159 

ant facts warrants the establishment of a rule, with greater or 
less probability as to its universality. This is called Inductive 
reasoning. 

These two classes of the reasoning process are mutually de- 
pendent. There can be no induction without a precedent 
sumption ; and there can be no deduction without a precedent 
sub-sumption. Every judgment is an inchoate syllogism. Take 
for example the declaration : Gold is yellow. The concept of 
the substance called ' gold ' must be compared with the con- 
cept ' yellow,' and it must be seen to agree. The color seen 
in the gold is not the old or ready-formed concept ' yellow ' in 
the mind ; it is a particular or individual perception which the 
apperceptive power recognizes as agreeing with the already 
subsisting concept yellow- There are thus present all the ele- 
ments of a syllogism ; and it may be written out as follows : — 

Whatever modifies light thus is yellow ; 

Gold has this property ; 

Ergo, gold is yellow. 

No proposition can be made which will not fall under the 
same head. Facts are simply propositions, and therefore no 
fact can be stated which has not a syllogism lurking under it ; 
and thus it is that the very elements of Inductive conclusions 
proceed from the principle of deduction. 

But it will be asked : How then is the first fact of knowledge 
— the first element of the first concept had ? I do not know 
that it would imperil one's reputation disastrously if one should 
frankly confess that one does not know. It would only go 
along with the answer to the question as to whence protoplasm 
comes, or whence anything is. The business of constructing 
the world out of nothing is not in especially high favor at this 
time ; and we may respectfully decline to attempt it. 

An answer may be given, however, in a way which without 
really explaining anything, carries us back as far as it is pos- 
sible to go, and as far as we ought to want to go. It is 



l60 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

simply this : Man is, by reason of his nature, a discoverer of 
likenesses and differences, and is thus an inchoate logician, 
and ?nust begin to know from the first moment of his conscious 
existence. Thus we see again that logic as an act precedes by 
an incalculable span the science or systematic knowledge of 
logic. 

That Deduction is in need of the help of Induction is freely 
admitted on all sides. Even in those cases where the premises 
are declarations of rational or intuitive truths, the Inductive 
element must be admitted, for no rational or necessary truth 
can be freed from an empirical element in the process of recog- 
nizing its axiomatic or universal character. 

In these two much discussed methods of reasoning, we seem 
to have but the expansion of the necessarily reciprocal phases 
of all knowing, analysis and synthesis. These we have seen 
to be mutually necessary to each other. In them we found 
the time-worn problem of ' the one and the many ' ; and here 
we come upon it face to face once more. Of the principle of 
Induction we shall see something further as we go on. 

We have spoken only of categorical syllogisms, — that is to 
say, of syllogisms in which the propositions fall under one or 
other of the four possible forms of unconditional or categorical 
propositions : All A is B, No A is B, Some A is B, and Some A 
is not B. In each of these forms there is simple affirmation or 
denial. But there are three other possible forms which propo- 
sitions may assume. They are all conditional in character : 
the simple conditional, If A is, B is ; the disjunctive, A is either 
B or C ; and the dilemmatic, If A is, B is either C or D. The 
last, it will be seen, is a combination of the other two. It is 
not necessary for our purpose to enter upon any discussion of 
conditional syllogisms. The fundamental principle upon which 
they depend will sufficiently appear as we proceed. 



THE PURE REASON. l6l 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE PURE REASON. 

Intuitive knowledge. Conditions of explicit thought. Controversy 
about 'Innate Ideas.' Experimental knowledge. Law of Identity. Law 
of Contradiction. Excluded middle. Its questionable use in certain 
cases. Hamilton. Sufficient Reason. Causality. Hume. Locke. Leib- 
nitz. The Laws of Motion. All science based upon necessary truths. 

IN all processes of reasoning we deal with relations, or the 
bearing of one notion upon another. This is the domain 
of the understanding proper. It does not, in its practical opera- 
tions, transcend the sphere of the limited, the conditioned, the 
finite. But relations presuppose a reality which underlies 
them, — a ground which enables them to be. The under- 
standing takes things and events as they are presented to it ; 
compares, arranges, and concludes, without necessarily asking 
why they are, or whence they come. We now seek the ground 
which supports the operations of the understanding. 

It must be apparent that all along through the preceding 
inquiry touching cognition there has always been a somewhat 
taken for granted. Even at the very threshold of animate ex- 
istence we found an element furnished to our hand, and with- 
out which science could take no step towards tracing the 
development of even the bodily mechanism. In the unit-mass 
of protoplasm, we found that we were compelled to recognize 
as pre-existing, the power of building up, or converting dead 
food into the living unit-mass — a power of self- movement, 
a capacity of responding to external stimuli through irritability 
or sensitiveness. In other words, we found life manifesting 
itself as a precedent condition. 



l62 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

This life with all that it involves, that is to say, all that is 
evolved through it, is a free gift. Although the effort has been 
persistently and repeatedly made, man has not been able to 
push this vital factor back into mere matter, or evolve it from 
dead matter. If it could be so evolved, the case would not be 
really different, since even then it would be only evolved ; and 
the beginning, in the sense of the ultimate, would not have 
been reached, but only pushed back one further stage. Mat- 
ter, instinct with life, could not be called dead, and even were 
it dead, the question would still obtrude itself : whence came 
this new factor which seizes upon and converts the material 
factor to its uses ? 

It is, then, manifestly impossible for a finite being to start 
without somewhat freely and absolutely given. But the origi- 
nal powers and capacities which the physicist is compelled to 
recognize as ready at hand in the protoplasmic mass are only the 
beginning of the gratuitously furnished capital which he is com- 
pelled to accept all along the way upward to man. He is com- 
pelled to recognize constantly emerging phenomena of which 
he is not at all in the secret. He cannot bridge the chasm 
between motion and sensation ; he cannot point out even the 
direction in which thought lies from sensation, nor will from 
either. He finds himself in the light of consciousness, but he 
does not know when it came to him, nor how ; he does not, 
and cannot, see it in another, and is as utterly in the dark as to 
what touch it has with the nerve-centres in the cortex of the 
brain, as our fathers were of its nature when they supposed it 
to reside in the pineal gland, or to exist independently of the 
body. It must be accepted as a revelation, happily bestowed 
at the auspicious juncture, no matter how far it may be made 
dependent, nor how perfectly synchronous with any stage of 
physiological development. 

Now, since this is manifestly true, it is in no wise more won- 
derful that the conscious life should come ready furnished with 



THE PURE REASON. 1 63 

laws of its being, than that the physical world should come to 
us with laws written in and through it. If it be answered that 
physical nature made its own laws, we ask : How do you 
know? They are unquestionably here, but nobody ever saw 
them come, and nobody knows what they are now that we see 
them. Who presumes to know what energy is? or chemical 
affinity ? or motion ? 

This objection, then, is but an assertion without possible 
proof, and, as such, may be passed. But if it had all proof, 
the fact of the prior existence of these laws of the material 
world, as the reason and explanation of physical phenomena, 
will not be disputed by any. 

In like way the actual existence of the laws of cognition can- 
not be disputed, nor their prior existence denied as the suffi- 
cient reason for the phenomena of thought. Whether these 
laws made themselves, is not the question. It is, Are they 
here? and are they logically prior to the development of 
knowledge ? 

Again, the question is not when they were first known to be 
dominating the knowledge-forming process. They might never 
be known, and yet be exercising their functions ; just as gravi- 
tation did its work through countless ages, before man knew 
anything about it. 

We have been stealthily approaching, in the preceding re- 
flections, a venerable controversy ; and we are now fairly on it. 
It is the question as to whether there are any ' innate ideas ' 
in the personality or not. In the first place, the name is an 
unfortunate one, prejudicing the question in the negative at 
the start. It may be safely asserted that nobody, fairly entitled 
to an opinion, holds, and that nobody, following Leibnitz in 
modern times, ever held, that the personality begins its work of 
gathering knowledge with a set of ready-made ideas in the 
mind ; somewhat as a clothier might be supposed to commence 
business, with a lot of made-up garments in stock ! That there 



164 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

are any innate ideas in this sense, no one fairly informed in the 
matter would presume to assert. To return, then, to the line 
we were' pursuing : in the course of the development of knowl- 
edge, after the manner we have briefly sketched, there are dis- 
covered certain laws which govern psychical action. These are 
facts of the self: and they are not derived from the external 
world. Let it be carefully borne in mind that there is no inten- 
tion in using the word ' derived ' to deny that experience of the 
external world is the occasion of their becoming known to the 
self. If one should find one's self in a perfectly dark room 
full of divers mechanisms, one would see nothing of them ; but 
if a light should be struck, they would be immediately revealed. 
The light would be the occasion or medium of their discovery, 
but not the cause. So of these original truths which belong to 
the self. Experience is the torch through which they are 
revealed to cognition, as well as the material upon which they 
operate. They would remain potentially in the mind forever, 
but could never become known to the self if no stimuli from 
the external world were ever presented to rouse our psychologi- 
cal energies. There never could be any empirical ego ; and so 
the self would never know that it had in it the potentialities of 
sensibility and cognition, and the power of self-determination, 

But, on the other hand, no matter what might be the number 
and character of the external stimuli, and no matter how con- 
tinuously they might be applied, there would be no sort of 
experience if the psychological factor of the self were not 
present. It would be like one ringing at the door-bell of an 
empty house. There would be nobody at home, and no 
response. Thus, experience itself is absolutely in need of a 
conscious presence to lift its physical basis from the dead 
world of mere motion and mass, into the life-world, before it 
can be experienced at all. 

Let us look at this a moment further. Take the illustration 
above, of the door-bell and the empty house. Suppose the 



THE PURE REASON. 165 

ringing from without should continue, and that any number of 
the simplest, or the most intricate signals were made with 
voice, or in any other way : what would be the result within ? 
The question hardly needs answer. If there were on the 
inside, plastic substances and sensitized plates to record all 
pressures and all effects of light, what would there be at last 
within, but so many pressures unfelt, and so many pictures 
unseen? There they might remain forever meaningless and 
dead. But now introduce an occupant. Those sounds and 
signals would become at once what they were not before. 
They would have meaning read into them by personality ; they 
would become the physical basis of thought and feeling. 

This illustration, if not made ' to go on all fours,' is a fair 
representation of the relative action of the physical and psy- 
chological factors in the simplest possible act of experience or 
sense-perception. The caution is especially intended to guard 
against the notion of the personality as shut up, or in any wise 
enclosed in the brain, or in any part of the body. As we have 
seen already there is no possibility of giving it a local habitat. 

Now it seems clear that the self has the inherent power of 
giving to molecular motions one thing which they had not them- 
selves, and that is meaning. It has the power of composing or 
uniting separate and several molecular acts into ideal wholes. 
But this is not done pell-mell and indiscriminately ; but with 
method and purpose. It must, therefore, be granted the power 
of discovering likeness and difference ; and this simple fact 
conceded, the gulf is passed between mere mechanism and 
personality ; — over the gulf which has no bridge in thought, 
thought passes and repasses continually in fact. 

It requires a little patient thought for us, accustomed all our 
lives to the matter-of-course use of this power, to see at first 
that there is anything to wonder at in such an elementary 
energy. But the more one thinks about it, the more impos- 
sible it becomes to say why A is A. One is disposed to ex- 



1 66 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

claim, with some feeling of contempt : ' Because it is.' The 
answer is philosophically correct ; but where does the ' because ' 
come in ? This word implies that we discover a reason ; but 
if so, what is it ? In our scorn we may say again : ' It has to 
be.' Yes ; but why? Any number of varying forms of assev- 
eration may be tried in turn, but no one of them will advance 
us one step further towards an explanation. There is no 
reason, except this simplest of all, // is. The difficulty in the 
case arises from its very simplicity and obviousness. We are 
compelled to see that a thing is itself, and that is the beginning 
and end of all efforts at explanation or comprehension of the 
fact. This is the first fundamental principle of all knowing. 
It is called the Law of Identity. It is certainly not derived 
from anything, because it is not separable into any possible 
elements ; and it does not come to us through {i.e. is not 
acquired by) experience, since it is a condition precedent, in 
the first and simplest act of experience. 

The principle of difference, or unlikeness — called the Law 
of Contradiction, is equally obvious and necessary. To say 
that A is not non-A (assuming of course that one first under- 
stands the use of such an abstract formula) needs no reflection 
and no instruction. It is, however, as the negation of the law 
of identity, dependent upon it. In strictness, identity and 
difference are not two distinct and several principles, but are 
simply the two indissoluble phases of the one act of limitation. 
Likeness is inconceivable without its correlation, unlikeness ; 
and the converse. But identity can be rightly called the 
positive, and difference the negative phase, since a thing 
cannot be ' othered ' — as the Hegelians say — until one, in 
some sort at least, identifies it as somewhat to be othered. 
The position of Fichte is indisputable, that the ego could never 
know itself as ego, if it were not that it finds itself limited by 
the non-ego. The negative character of difference seems 
equally clear, since no aggregation of mere differences would 
give ' thing ' a content. 



THE PURE REASON. \6j 

Again, of two contradictories, — that is to say, two concepts 
or judgments, such that they, taken together, comprise all 
being, the affirmation of either absolutely denies the other ; 
and the denial of either necessarily affirms the other : thus A 
and non-A are contradictories, since non-A comprises what- 
ever there is in the universe not found in A ; and the converse. 
It is obvious that there is no middle ground between them ; 
and this absolute exclusion is the third fundamental truth of 
logic, called the Law of Excluded Middle. 

Now, this doctrine of ' Excluded Middle,' while undoubtedly 
valid in itself, is easily susceptible of abuse in practice ; and 
has been often used to false ends. It is necessary that the 
antithesis shall be certainly established before an argument is 
based upon it. Even as great a logician as Sir William Hamil- 
ton has failed, it should seem, in his use of it. In his " Phi- 
losophy of the Conditioned," he uses the doctrine of Excluded 
Middle with respect to Space and Time. Thus : Space is 
either limited or unlimited. It is not limited, therefore it is 
unlimited. But there is grave doubt as to whether it is either 
one or the other, — many of the ablest philosophers holding 
that space is not an objective entity at all, but is purely sub- 
jective. But to make the point more obvious, let us take a 
manifest absurdity, thus : Mercy is either animate or inanimate. 
Suppose one could prove that it is not alive : are we therefore 
shut up to the conclusion that it is dead ? If I may so say, the 
doctrine of Excluded Middle is a mill, but one must be sure 
of what is put into the hopper before one can be certain of 
what is ground out. Great circumspection is necessary when- 
ever one attempts to put the Infinite, the Absolute, the Naught, 
the Ultimate, in any form through any sort of logic-mill ; and 
it is not surprising that queer grists have been ground out, from 
time to time, by those who have flattered themselves that they 
had emptied one or more measures of these transcendental con- 
cepts into the hopper. It is not a mere figure of speech to 



l68 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

call logic a mill ; for it is, in itself, as much a piece of dead 
mechanism as a corn-mill or a sewing-machine. 

Again, whenever a change takes place which we recognize 
by the law of difference or contradiction — whenever a thing 
begins to be or become, or an event happens, we, by a neces- 
sary law of the self, think there must be some reason or cause 
which produces such change or event. This principle of causal 
dependence is the fourth fundamental law of logic, called the 
' Law of Sufficient Reason.' 

The question as to how man gets hold of the notion of cause 
has been long a subject of earnest controversy. Hume occu- 
pies a conspicuous position in the discussion — indeed, the 
battle seems to have been waged about him as the point d'appui. 
It was he who, as an antagonist, set the Scotch school upon 
its mettle ; and the great philosopher of Konigsberg tells us 
that it was Hume who first woke him to the fray. It is not my 
purpose to follow the history of the contention, or to attempt 
any detailed treatment of the subject ; but the matter is too 
important to pass in silence. David Hume and his followers, 
James and John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and the whole 
school of empiricists, declare that there are no original or nec- 
essary notions in the mind ; but that all knowledge is derived 
from without through experience. The reader will readily per- 
ceive from what has gone before, that in one sense the present 
writer has no objections to this statement. " Nihil est in in- 
tellect, quod no ft fuerit in sensu " is certainly true, if it be 
understood in the light of the added phrase of Leibnitz " prae- 
ter intellectum ipsum." Manifestly there could never be any 
material of thought in the mind if the senses did not do their 
office ; but, as we have seen, if there were no mind to give it 
meaning, there would still be no thought. 

This carries us back to the question as to whether the psy- 
chical nature of man has laws which pervade it, or, in other 
words, whether it has a nature at all. 



THE PURE REASON. 169 

Now Locke, who is commonly regarded as the father of 
modern empiricism (though both Gassendi and Hobbes must 
have precedence in time), is perfectly clear, though not always 
consistent in his recognition of the native powers of the mind. 
Almost at the beginning of his famous essay, in speaking of 
maxims, he declares that they are not founded upon reasoning, 
" for all reasoning is search, and casting about, and requires 
pains and application ; and how can it, with any tolerable 
sense, be supposed that what was imprinted by nature, as the 
foundation and guide of our reason, should need the use of 
reason to discover it?" Although there is a confusion here 
according to modern terminology in using ' reason ' and ' rea- 
soning ' as interchangeable, his meaning is that the process of 
reasoning must find a foundation in that which ' was imprinted 
by nature,' and which is now called the Pure Reason. In the 
fourth book of the essay there is constant recognition of this 
truth. He says : " If we will reflect on our own ways of think- 
ing, we shall find that sometimes the mind perceives the agree- 
ment or disagreement of two ideas immediately by themselves, 
without the intervention of any other : and this, I think, may be 
called intuitive knowledge. For in this the mind is at no pains 
of proving or examining, but perceives the truth, as the eye doth 
light, only by being directed towards it. Thus the mind per- 
ceives that white is not black, that a circle is not a triangle, that 
three are more than two, and equal to one and two. Such kind 
of truths the mind perceives at the first sight of the ideas to- 
gether, by bare intuition, without the intervention of any other 
idea ; and this kind of knowledge is the clearest and most cer- 
tain that human frailty is capable of. This part of knowledge 
is irresistible, and like bright sunshine, forces itself immedi- 
ately to be perceived, as soon as ever the mind turns its view 
that way ; and leaves no room for hesitation, doubt, or exami- 
nation, but the mind is presently filled with the clear light of it. 
It is on this intuition that depends all the certainty and evi- 



170 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

dence of all our knowledge ; which certainty every one finds 
to be so great, that he cannot imagine, and therefore not re- 
quire, a greater : for a man cannot conceive himself capable of 
greater certainty, than to know that any idea in his mind is 
such as he perceives it to be ; and that two ideas, wherein he 
perceives a difference, are different, and not precisely the same. 
He that demands a greater certainty than this, demands he 
knows not what, and shows only that he has a mind to be a 
skeptic, without being able to be so. Certainty depends so 
wholly on this intuition, that in the next degree of knowledge, 
which I call demonstration, this intuition is necessary in all the 
connections of the intermediate ideas, without which we can- 
not attain knowledge and certainty." 

Many other passages could be quoted to the same end, but 
it is unnecessary. The confusion which seems to lie at the 
bottom of the endless discussion on the subject of innate ideas 
is the failure to distinguish between the native potency of the 
personality to discover necessary truths as occasion requires, 
and an explicit notion of such truths already subsisting in the 
mind previous to any possible experience. In this later sense, 
as Locke and Hume and all that school contend, there are no 
innate ideas ; and this is only to say what a far greater than 
any one of them declared at the beginning of the controversy, 
— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz. 

Hume recognizes the inherent power of the mind to discover 
necessary truths as clearly as his great predecessor, Locke. 
" The mind of man is so formed by nature," that it sees and 
feels so and so ; the belief that heat and cold will follow con- 
tact with flame and snow " is the necessary result of placing 
the mind in such circumstances. It is an operation of the 
soul, when we are so situated, as unavoidable as to feel the 
passion of love, when we receive benefits ; or hatred, when we 
meet with injuries. All these operations are a species of natu- 
ral instincts, which no reasoning or process of the thought and 



THE PURE REASON. I/I 

understanding is able either to produce or to prevent." Again, 
" Reason is nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct 
in our souls, which carries us along a certain train of ideas, and 
endows them with particular qualities, according to their par- 
ticular situations and relations." Speaking of mathematical 
truths he says : " Propositions of this kind are discoverable by 
the mere operations of thought, without dependence on what 
is anywhere existent in the universe. Though there never were 
a circle or a triangle in nature, the truths demonstrated by 
Euclid would forever retain their certainty and evidence." 

Hume addresses himself especially to the question of cau- 
sation, contending that all that experience reveals in two percep- 
tions which appear to have a causal nexus is their succession, — 
that " the mind never perceives any real connection among 
distinct existences," i.e. never sees the nexus between them ; 
and I fancy nobody who has really reflected upon the matter 
thinks he can. The point of the difficulty seems to be just 
here, and is precisely the same we saw a few pages back in the 
illustration of the door-bell. There would be nothing but suc- 
cession (and even that would not be perceived, if the perceiver 
be not granted), and these successive existences could never 
have any thought-nexus except for the unifying power of the 
thinker. It is just this power which discovers itself to us in 
attention, and in every conative act. When we have got far 
enough to formulate the thought, ' every event must have a 
cause,' this ideally-real nexus has risen up in us as an object of 
knowledge, and we cannot banish it. We then see that if a 
thing be let alone, it will continue to be just where and just 
what it is. 

Now Hume saw this distinctly, and expressed it unequivo- 
cally. "Upon the whole," he says, "necessity is something 
that exists in the mind, not in objects ; nor is it possible for us 
ever to form the most distant idea of it, considered as a 
quality in bodies." Again: "As the necessity, which makes 



1/2 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

two times two equal to four, or three angles of a triangle equal 
to two right ones, lies only in the understanding, by which we 
consider and compare these ideas, in like manner, the neces- 
sity of power, which unites causes and effects, lies in the deter- 
mination of the mind to pass from the one to the other." This 
is found in his "Treatise of Human Nature." In his more 
mature work, the " Inquiry concerning Human Understand- 
ing," which he expressly desires to supersede ' that juvenile 
work,' he makes the following emphatic statement : " It is 
universally allowed, that matter, in all its operations, is actuated 
by a necessary force, and that every natural effect is so pre- 
cisely determined by the energy of its cause, that no other 
effect, in such particular circumstances, could possibly have 
resulted from it. The degree and direction of every motive is, 
by the laws of nature, prescribed with such exactness, that a 
living creature may as soon arise from the shock of two bodies, 
as motion, in any other degree or direction, than what is actu- 
ally produced by it." 

He does not consider that there is any conflict between these 
statements, but it is interesting to note that he avows that there 
is a causal necessity in the understanding, and an equally cer- 
tain causal nexus in the material world. His point is that 
while this is true, the fact of this causal certainty in the objec- 
tive world is established as a fact in the understanding and is 
due to experience ; with which we have no quarrel, so long as 
it is borne in mind that experience is but the occasion of the 
discovery in consciousness of this necessary law of personality. 
That this characteristic of mental necessity could not be derived 
from an accumulation of mere experiences needs no better 
witness than Hume himself. He says : " Matters of fact, which 
are the second objects of human reason, are not ascertained 
in the same manner [as mathematical truths] ; nor is our evi- 
dence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the 
foregoing. The contrary of every matter of fact is still pos- 



THE PURE REASON. 1 73 

sible, because it can never imply a contradiction, and is con- 
ceived by the mind with the same facility and distinctness, as 
if ever so conformable to reality. ' That the sun will not rise 
to-morrow,' is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no 
more contradiction, than the affirmative, ' that it will rise.' 
We should in vain, therefore, attempt to demonstrate its false- 
hood. Were it demonstrably false, it would imply a contra- 
diction, and could never be distinctly conceived by the mind." 

Now this notion of cause has just this characteristic, that its 
contradictory is absolutely unthinkable, and upon it the whole 
magnificent fabric of science rests. Mechanical action is, as 
we have abundantly seen, the final test of all scientific research. 
But the whole doctrine of mechanics rests upon the first of 
the three Laws of Newton, the second and third hanging 
upon the first. That law is a pure metaphysical statement, 
without the slightest possible experience to support it, and with 
all experience against it. It is, ' Every body continues in a state 
of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, except in so far 
as it is compelled by force to change that state.' But did any 
one ever see a body moving in a straight line with uniform 
velocity? There is no such thing as a straight line, and prob- 
ably by no possible contrivance could a body be made to move 
accurately in a straight line. A body falling under the action 
of gravitation does not describe a straight line, but one of the 
conic curves, and the equation of a projectile only becomes 
that of a right line (a particular case of a parabola) under 
suppositions which never can be true. 

Is not science with unbroken voice assuring us that there is 
no such thing as actual rest in the universe, and that there is 
no such thing as unimpeded motion? Who, then, ever had 
experience of either the one or the other? And yet, who that 
understands the proposition fails to see that its contradictory is 
unthinkable? It is the law of persistence. A thing cannot 



1^4 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

take on a new state unless there be somewhat to compel it ; 
that is, there must be a cause, or there will be no change. 

The second law declares that ' change of motion takes place 
in the straight line in which the force acts,' but no one ever 
saw a body deflected from its path move in the line of the 
deflecting force, but in the .diagonal of the two velocities. 
While the law is necessarily true to reason, it is not true to the 
senses. 

The third law is, perhaps, even more at variance with com- 
mon experience. If a cart pulls back upon a horse just as 
much as the horse pulls forward, ' How in the name of common 
sense,' asks the untaught mind, ' does the cart get on ? ' If a 
boy and a man are tugging at a rope, the man pulls the boy 
towards him, and that certainly does not look as if the boy's 
end of the rope was pulled back with exactly the same force as 
the man's is pulled in the opposite direction ■ and yet it un- 
doubtedly is ; for, says the third law, ' Action and reaction 
are equal and contrary.' And thus it seems plain that we 
should never have had any science of mechanics if the world 
had had to wait for the senses to give us the fundamental 
truths upon which it is so firmly established. 

Let it be granted, then, that the first light thrown upon the 
fact that cause is a necessary law of mental action, comes from 
the discovery of the precedent fact that we find our bodily 
movements to be the results of effort ; and let it be further 
granted that we cannot see any nexus between the will, and the 
movement of the muscles (as is certainly true), and yet the 
fact remains that the whole world including Hume, thinks, and 
cannot help thinking, that everything which begins to be what 
it was not, must have something acting upon it, quite otherwise 
than as a mere precedent existence ; that is, the whole world 
knows that every event must have a cause. 

That energy of the personality which discovers to us necessary 
truths is called the l Pure Reason.' 



EMPIRICAL AND RATIONAL TRUTH. 1 75 



CHAPTER XVII. 

EMPIRICAL AND RATIONAL TRUTH. 

Conditional Syllogism and Law of Sufficient Reason. No law of the 
natural world above doubt. Not so in thought. ' A priori? ' original,' 
etc., truths. Necessity the characteristic. Relation of Deduction and In- 
duction. The basis of Induction. Intuition of Space. The Infinite and 
Absolute. The ' Philosophy of the Conditioned.' 

THE fourth fundamental principle of logic, the law of 
1 Sufficient Reason,' is founded in the notion of cause, 
and is that which gives validity to conditional syllogisms. If A 
is, B is, expresses a causal nexus between A and B, such that the 
existence of A, the antecedent, necessitates the existence of B, 
the consequent ; and so the principle is sometimes called the 
law of ' Reason and Consequent. ' The position of Hume with 
regard to the sequence of events, as we have seen, is perfectly 
true in the realm of things. A thing or event does not neces- 
sarily imply the existence of that which precedes it ; i.e. change 
is not the effect of mere antecedence ; and we can never know 
without question, that any effect in nature is compelled by that 
which appears to be its cause, and just for the reason Hume 
urges ; namely, we cannot see the physical links in any suc- 
cession of existences : but with concepts, connected by a law 
of the Reason, the difference is marked. In a hypothetical 
proposition, such as that given above, where ex hypothesi, A is 
the reason for B, the causal nexus is indisputably established 
in thought. If it be accepted that, ' If A is, B is,' a dependence 
is established between antecedent and consequent which is 
inevitable. This relation has, therefore, a certainty which 



I76 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

never can be felt as between any two existences in the world 
of things. 

If now it becomes categorically certain that ' A is,' i.e. if the 
condition be removed by the affirmation of the antecedent, 
the existence of B follows with a certainty greater than that 
the earth is. 

The negation of the condition — that is, the denial that 'A is,' 
— carries nothing with it whatever ; because there is no hypo- 
thetical relation implied between the non-existence of A and 
B ; B may exist from a thousand other reasons than the exist- 
ence of A. Take a concrete example : ' If the price of flour 
goes up, the poor will suffer.' Here it is obvious that though 
flour remain stationary, the poor may suffer from cold, or 
disease, or what not. 

Neither is there any relation established affirmatively in the 
proposition between B's existence and A's ; for B, as we have 
just seen, may exist from other causes ; the poor may suffer 
though flour continue steady. There remains but one other 
way of treating the proposition. We can deny the consequent. 
In that case we touch the causal nexus, and the denial of A 
also follows necessarily. If the poor do not suffer, the price of 
flour cannot have advanced. 

It is just because the causal connection between separate 
acts of existence can never be discovered, as between things 
and events in nature, that no law of the natural world, as Hume 
declares, can be raised above the possibility of doubt. We do 
not doubt, it is true, that ponderable bodies when released 
from their supports will fall to the ground, under the action of 
gravitation ; but it is not unthinkable that they might be de- 
prived of their weight suddenly by the action of some new 
Aladdin's Lamp, and fly upwards. The difference, thus, be- 
tween necessary truth, in which the causal connection is in the 
form itself and not at all dependent upon the content, and 
empirical truth, in which the connection, being dependent upon 



EMPIRICAL AND RATIONAL TRUTH. IJJ 

the content, can never be seen, is world-wide. In the one 
class we cannot even start to doubt ; and in the other the roads 
to doubt lead off in every direction. In all mathematical 
truths, doubt is impossible ; to which Hume bears such une- 
quivocal testimony. Try as we may, we cannot think that a 
part is as great as the whole, and so with all axiomatic truth, 
and all conclusions which flow apodictically. 

Now let it be borne in mind that the proposition is not that 
all persons alike see truths which have in them this charac- 
teristic of necessity. It is often urged as an objection, for 
example, that in a column of figures several persons may find 
the sum quite different. Undeniably, one may make blunders 
in adding ; but does anybody doubt that the sum is certain for 
all that, and that the trouble is in the unconscious slips in 
reckoning it ? So with all necessary truths which are recondite 
and locked up to all but those of high mathematical or logical 
perception. Truth in its very nature is absolutely definite ; 
but it is not always axiomatic. When not at once apparent we 
approach it from the axiomatic side, and the results emerge 
deductively and necessarily, unless — and this, as we shall see 
further, is an important exception to note — unless we at some 
stage of the deductive process introduce concealed or pregnant 
factors ; in which case, the conclusion may be worthless. The 
apodictic or inevitable character of every stage of an argument, 
and of every element introduced, is presupposed. 

Axioms or self-evident truths, then, are the original elements 
out of which, or in consequence of which, all conclusions of a 
deductive and necessary character result. Even when they are 
simple — that is, cannot be resolved into any possible elements — 
they are not equally conspicuous to all persons, nor to the same 
person at all stages of mental development. They are not seen 
at all by any in the infantile period, nor by those of low mental 
development at once when pointed out ; and yet, in point of 
fact, they are actually employed by every one long before they 



I78 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

become articulately differentiated in consciousness. Their self- 
evident character consists in this, that when once brought into 
the light of consciousness as objects of thought, they cannot be 
resolved into more simple elements, and have no ground deeper 
than pure necessity ; their contradictions are, therefore, unthink- 
able. Many people live and die without knowing what an axiom 
is, or so much as that there are any ; but they, all the same, 
have been acting upon them practically at every stage of their 
conscious life ; and can be made to recognize the fact if their 
attention be properly directed. 

Take an illustration of this, though the point is almost too 
plain to require it. Suppose the veriest boor, without any sort 
of education, and without much native mental vigor, be asked 
to find out whether two posts in the ground are of the same 
length. He would most likely take a rod, and mark the length 
of one of them on it, and then try the other by it. Nobody 
could do better ; and if his work is done carefully, the result is 
inevitably correct. Now why is it that these two posts are pro- 
nounced equal in length (if it should so prove) through the 
medium of the rod? The self-evident truth upon which the 
whole action is based, when brought to the light and clothed in 
words is, 'Two things which are equal to a third are equal to 
each other.' It is the same truth which we saw underlying all 
syllogistic reasoning and all judgments whatever. It is neces- 
sary for the first act of comparison, and is therefore presup- 
posed from the very beginning of all accumulated knowledge. 
It is a law of the psychical factor of the self; and such truths 
are called, ' a priori f ' original,' ' primordial,' ' intuitive,' ' funda- 
mental,' ' necessary,' and, I do not know by how many other 
names, — all meaning substantially the same thing. They be- 
long to that phase of our cognitive nature called the i Pure 
Reason.' 

A distinction is, then, to be made between the Understand- 
ing and the Reason — a logical distinction, though by no means 



EMPIRICAL AND RATIONAL TRUTH. 1 79 

a separation. Through the understanding we put things to- 
gether, or separate them into classes or units, — we synthesize 
and analyze, — but these operations have their ground in the 
deeper truths of the Reason. Reason and Reasoning are there- 
fore to be distinguished in thought. The ' Pure Reason ' is 
not properly the domain of thought at all, — it is the founda- 
tion upon which the whole thought fabric rests. It is itself 
blind, and so does not see ; but the mental seeing or thought 
power is dependent upon it for its validity in every act. It is 
founded in the psychical sense-world, if I may so speak, and is 
to the higher modes of the self in the discovery of apodictic 
truth, what sensation, with its physical basis and dependence 
upon external stimuli, is to the world of sense-perceptions. 
Not that it does not reach down into these as well ; because it 
is, so to speak, the final court of appeal in all possible knowing, 
and its touch must be co-extensive with the whole personality. 
There is thus the very best ground for calling the presentations 
of the pure reason intuitions, or face-to-face knowledge. They, 
as making all hyper-physical knowledge possible, should seem 
to be analogous to the senses which make all bodily knowledge 
possible. They have their roots in sense-perception, much as 
the senses have theirs buried out of sight in sub-conscious sen- 
sation; and there thus seems to be two measurably distinct 
psychical worlds, — one the sense-world, based upon the imme- 
diate presentations of the physical organs, with a very slight 
intellectual factor ; and the other, the rational world, distinct- 
ively ideal, based upon the face-to-face presentations in the 
Pure Reason. The one is the region of brute-life ; the other 
of soul-life. In man the two are conjoined, — the ideal mode 
superposed upon the animal mode with the power to sublimate 
and refine the lower to its higher uses. 

We have seen that the distinguishing characteristic of ra- 
tional truth is necessity. In the conclusion based upon sense- 
perception, or contingent truth, the highest reach is probability, 



l80 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

and the chasm between the highest probability and a necessary 
truth cannot be spanned. 

Besides this, or, better perhaps, in consequence of this, the 
method by which any contingent truth is reached is the reverse 
of that leading to a necessary conclusion. In the case of 
necessary truth the results or conclusions flow out from the 
basic elements given in the intuitions or axioms of the pure 
reason, as water from a fountain. In the case of contingent 
truth the results are an accumulation, and are as a reservoir 
filled by the flow from the living source. This last process is 
Induction. It is, as indicated above, synthetic; the rational 
process being analytic. 

Now, if I may use my figure a little further, in the reservoir 
there is always something more to come, and this goes on for- 
ever ; while in the flowing stream, it is just what it is, from any 
given source. Synthetic or contingent truth is as the water in 
a reservoir of infinite capacity, always increasing, but never 
full ; analytic or rational truth is living reality, exact and defi- 
nite, though different persons see more or less of it from any 
particular point of view. 

The inductive method is to add fact to fact until a probable 
conclusion is formed ; and as the number of facts increases, 
the conclusion becomes more and more probable, becoming at 
last overpowering ; but never acquiring the quality of neces- 
sity. For example, some one in the beginning observed the 
fact that all the horned animals he knew were ruminant. 
Others observed the same thing ; the inquiry was still further 
extended, until all parts of the world had been explored, and 
the facts always remaining the same, it has become an estab- 
lished truth which no body doubts. But one can think the 
contrary easily enough, — think that it might not be so ; and, 
more than this, it may not in fact be true after all ; for there 
are still parts of the world not thoroughly looked into ; and 
horned animals may yet be found which do not chew the cud. 



EMPIRICAL AND RATIONAL TRUTH. l8l 

In like way the most probable — what we call certain facts 
of nature — are open to question notwithstanding their uni- 
versal acceptance. 

The question has been much debated as to what principle 
underlies Induction; and many answers have been given. 
Whately says it is resolvable into the belief in the " Uniformity 
of the laws of Nature," — that this is the major premise, and 
the particulars observed, the minor; and the whole process 
syllogistic. 

Stuart Mill gives in his adhesion to this proposition as the 
" fundamental principle or general axiom of Induction " ; and 
yet he says that this principle is the result of Induction, and 
that it " is one of the last, or at all events, one of those which 
are latest in attaining philosophical accuracy." But he also 
says, " Unless it were true, all other inductions would be falla- 
cious." It is hard to see how a thing can be the principle 
upon which a process depends, and yet be the result of the 
process ; but he is at least right in his assertion that it comes 
late ; and just for this reason it cannot be the conscious basis 
of a process which goes on long before its discovery. 

It is not necessary to speak of other and more elaborate 
theories to account for this rational process. In the light of 
what has been said, Induction is just what it seems to be, — 
a systematic gathering together of facts by the inherent power 
of personality. The self is by its nature a unifier. It cannot 
help co-ordinating all facts which are presented, with the pur- 
pose of discovering their meaning ; that is, the dependence or 
the relations which subsist between them. When several facts 
present a common element, since the apperceiving nature of 
the self is to discover order or law, these agreements lead the 
self to look for the like element in further instances of the 
same kind ; and thus the expectation rises that further instances 
of the class will fall under the tentative rule so far formulated. 
It is not, thus, that there is any original notion touching the 



1 82 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. * 

uniformity of the laws of nature ; for this has yet to get itself 
recognized, but it is that the self by the law of its nature — the 
spring of all knowledge — is a diviner of law. To ask why this 
should be is to ask why man should be as he is — a manifestly 
idle question. This power is the same as that which at a later 
stage is called the ' Scientific Imagination.' It projects an 
order of sequences which has been already noted, into the 
future as a possible, then a probable, and finally as an estab- 
lished law. And this is all we can ever know of any law of the 
external world. It cannot be apodictic, or so necessary that 
its contradictory is unthinkable. It is at last but a fact of 
experience and can only get such a measure of certainty as its 
universality may warrant. 

It is not possible to make a complete inventory of the neces- 
sary facts in this higher plane of our psychical nature. No 
doubt the sharpest scrutiny must leave behind many which 
enter into the daily life of personality, just as there are, indis- 
putably, many physical facts which science has not, and per- 
haps can never wholly bring within the sphere of the under- 
standing. Science is daily enlarging our scope in the physical 
domain, and philosophy, if we are to make a distinction where 
none really exists, is giving us clearer views of the higher facts 
and their attendant laws. 

It seems important, however, that we should look at some 
of these fundamental truths of the hypersensible world, with 
some degree of attention. First, Space and Time. The no- 
tion of space is the necessary logical ground of external reality ; 
we do not come into the world with the notion ready 
formed, but with a nature such that the notion emerges with 
absolute certainty upon an acquaintance with the external 
world, and once in the mind, its contradictory cannot be con- 
ceived. It is not necessary to discuss further the question of 
its genesis. It is enough that it does certainly emerge, and 
when once in the mind admits of no question. Whether it is 



EMPIRICAL AND RATIONAL TRUTH. 1 83 

itself an objective reality — that is, 'thing' — or whether it is 
but a necessary form of thought, as held by Leibnitz, urged 
later by Kant, and finally by Lotze, need not occupy us here. 
Sure it is, that, we cannot think of object without the spacial 
notion obtruding itself upon us, and when once in sight, we 
cannot but admit that it has been all along assumed or pre- 
sumed in contemplating extension of any sort. All men, in all 
time and in all places, show themselves to be possessed of the 
notion, and it is therefore properly called a pre-supposition. 

But object must have limits or environment, and it cannot 
be certainly known until the distinction of the ' thing ' from 
what it is not is clear in consciousness. This requires that the 
environment of a thing shall be known, before the thing can be 
defined. The logical environment of object, when all else is 
removed, is space ; and if the object be supposed to dwindle 
until it shrinks up into zero, the space occupied by it at the 
beginning still remains, so that objects carry the necessary 
notion of space out of and beyond them ; and, once in the 
mind, it must remain, though they be removed or thought out 
of existence. Now space cannot be thought to diminish or 
move. It is a necessary notion. 

But space as environment must be given an objective exist- 
ence, at least in thought. It must, therefore, itself have envi- 
ronment. What is it? If any limited portion of space be 
conceived, as a cube, its environment can only be the space 
without. If it be enlarged, the external space does not retire 
before it, but passes within. The only limit of space, there- 
fore, is space ; that is to say, space is self-limited, or, which is 
the same thing, unlimited. The unlimited is the non-finite — 
the Infinite. Thus, the necessary notion of the Infinite 
emerges in the Self. 

Sir William Hamilton and his school contend that we can- 
not know the Infinite except as a negation, or by ' a thinking 
away from it.' If this be understood to mean that we cannot 



I84 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

construe or limit the unlimited, it is simply a truism. The 
infinite clearly cannot be shaken together and compressed so 
as to be got within the compass of the limited, the ' condi- 
tioned/ which is the province of the understanding. But Sir 
William contends earnestly for a higher province of the Self, 
that of necessary truth, — truth known through the ' Regulative 
Faculty.' The ' understanding ' has not then an exclusive claim 
to all knowing, else what would become of this 'Regulative 
Faculty ■ for which he makes such absolute demand ? What 
would become of the principle of identity, or cause, or the 
notion of existence ? There is a Knowing, — the deepest of 
all, which lies quite below the plane of the ' Elaborative ' fac- 
ulty, — quite beyond the province of the understanding, — a 
knowing which is itself the ground of all elaborations of the 
faculty of relations. The Unconditioned, the Infinite, the Ab- 
solute, the Un-caused, the Omniscient, and Omnipotent Pure 
Being, and all the necessary notions of the Self, are incontest- 
ably known somehow; and the Understanding is the instru- 
ment through which they are revealed to consciousness, and in 
attempting to construe them fails not to recognize their inscru- 
table character. Sir William would no doubt have freely 
admitted all this, and perhaps he has done it, in effect, in his 
letter to Calderwood on the subject, in which he says : " When 
I deny that the Infinite can by us be known, I am far from 
denying that by us it is, must, and ought to be, believed." 
That is quite sufficient, since a necessary belief is the surest of 
all knowing ; but it seems a pity that he did not see the bear- 
ing of it more clearly, or seeing, did not make it more explicit. 
It might have saved the revival of the Sensational School of 
Philosophy, and the consequent flood of Agnosticism. The 
same remark applies to Dean Mansel's ." Limits of Religious 
Thought," though it seems odd that any one should fail to see 
that this is his true meaning. 



BEARING OF EMPIRICISM ON PERSONALITY. 1 85 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE BEARING OF EMPIRICISM ON PERSONALITY. 

Intuition of Time. Time the ground of Motion Space, of Mass. Cause 
conditions Space and Time. Inertia. Self-activity inconceivable in 
1 things.' Personality the only ground of efficient cause. ' Persistent 
Force.' Doubt as to the being of ' force ' as an entity. Professor Tait 
quoted. Spencer's effort to find an ultimate Reality. Energy implies 
Personality. Spencer's position sounder than that of his followers. 
Quoted. His ' Unknown ' known. 

TIME is the logical ground of change. There can be no 
motion, no becoming, out of time. It is therefore a nec- 
essary presupposition of motion, as space is of mass. The time- 
object is an event. Its environment is that which precedes or 
follows. An event can only be limited by an event, and so all 
history is but an account of actions, or of things and places as 
accessory to actions. Space and Time are, as the mathema- 
ticians say, incommensurable, they have no common unit. No 
possible effort of thought can find a passage-way from time over 
into space, or from space into time. 

Time and space, then, taken together, are the presupposi- 
tions or ground of all things, — time, the rational condition of 
motion, — space, that of mass, — motion and mass being the 
only two factors which physical science has found irresolvable, 
and into which all physical phenomena can themselves be re- 
solved. But now we find that they each have a psychological 
basis, and that these necessary presuppositions of the self are 
the ground of all physical reality. 

An object stands related necessarily to its environment, and 
the ground of the object, as well as that which lies beyond and 



1 86 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

out of the object, is extension or space. The external space is a 
reason for the limit which defines the object, and the object is 
a reason which defines external extension in the direction of the 
object. Take away either of these, with respect to the other, 
and that other disappears from thought. They must, then, 
stand related as cause and effect. 

But we have seen that in order to have a notion of a limited 
portion of space, as of a geometrical cube, we are compelled 
to give it an environment, and that this environment is itself 
space. If we do not conceive space as excluding itself, we 
must give up our notion of a definite portion of pure or geo- 
metrical space. There is a reason, therefore, for any possible 
conception of dimensions or defined extension. But a reason 
for a thing is its cause ; and if one definite portion of space 
did not support or exclude the space without, it would all rush 
together into a point and disappear. This seems to be a nec- 
essary notion, regarding space as a somewhat having an inde- 
pendent existence external to us, or, as a rational intuition, with 
only a subjective reality. Space, then, has a ground deeper 
than itself in the notion of cause. 1 

The case is the same with Time. An event is defined or 
limited by other events, one before and the other after. 
Removing these, the event itself must pass out of thought. 
But when we consider a portion of pure time, as a minute or 
any fraction of a minute, the limits are still the preceding and 
succeeding instants, which are reciprocally the reasons one for 
the other. If the defined instant is not thought of as excluding 
those on either hand, time can no longer be thought of as en- 
during, but must collapse into zero and disappear. The notion 
of causation, therefore, cannot be got rid of, even in time, 
whether it be regarded as objective or subjective. 

But now that we have found causation to be the necessary 

1 See W. T. Harris' " Philosophy in Outline," reprint from Journal 

of Speculative Philosophy. 



BEARING OF EMPIRICISM ON PERSONALITY. 1 87 

ground in the world of extension and of duration, that is to 
say, of all that we know in the external world, we are com- 
pelled to allow causality itself to have a ground deeper than 
itself. A cause to be a cause must have an effect, and an effect 
to be an effect must have a cause. But these must in some 
way affect each other. The cause must produce or compel its 
effect, and the effect must necessarily receive and store up 
the cause. This is energy, kinetic (moving) or potential 
(quiescent). 

But energy must proceed or go out. This it must do of 
itself, or it must itself be compelled ; that is to say, it must be 
the recipient of action. In the world of inanimate things, we 
never think of one thing acting upon another, without being 
itself first acted upon. A stone would lie just where it is for- 
ever, if not disturbed by some external energy. It would never 
change the state or condition, i.e. its molecular condition, 
unless it were acted upon by moisture, heat light, electricity, 
or some mode of energy; and when so affected, it converts 
kinetic energy into potential ; which it in turn gives forth again 
as kinetic ; but only when some change takes place in its 
environment. It is inert ; and this principle is the fundamental 
postulate of mechanics — Newton's first law. It is the prin- 
ciple of Inertia. 

It is important to get a clear notion of what is meant by 
Inertia. It is that property of matter by which change is 
resisted, with respect to either rest or motion. It is thus 
always in the opposition, — its voice an eternal ' Nay.' It is 
the all-pervading recalcitrant factor of external nature ; and 
just for this reason, the conserver of the material Universe. 
But for inertia, nothing would lie still, and nothing could move, 
since a breath would move the world, and a breath would stop 
it when in motion. It is the one necessary condition of matter. 

In consequence, then, of this conserver of the material Uni- 
verse, inert objects have not the power of self-action, but can 



155 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

only be the agents of such energy as may be transferred to 
them. When we say that a stone is the cause of the breakage 
of a pane of glass, we know well enough that we do not quite 
mean it. We know that there must have been a hand and 
arm to set the stone in motion, if it have a human origin ; and 
when we have traced it back to such a source, we seek no 
further, but are satisfied that we have found the cause in the 
true sense. 

An action belonging to the class in which one insentient 
thing acts upon another, is called a secondary or occasional 
cause. One belonging to the class in which we find the origin 
of the action to be a person is called an original or an efficient 
cause. When an action is the result of the working of nature, 
as when we say, 'The sun is the cause of light and heat,' or 
1 Matter is the cause of gravitation and inertia,' it clearly be- 
longs to the class of secondary causes. We could think of the 
sun being the cause of its own action, only upon the precedent 
thought that it has personality. It is impossible for one to 
predicate self-action of anything without assuming sensibility 
as a necessary postulate, — such sensibility, too, as makes it 
possible for the animated being to put forth a purposive action. 
This, I think, we are warranted in saying, is the universal con- 
viction of men. And thus it is that in Rhetoric we have the 
figure of personification in which inanimate objects are, in fancy, 
invested with life and self-activity. The admission that an 
inanimate object could act of itself, would utterly overthrow 
the whole science of mechanics. 

It seems clear, then, that the only class of actions which can 
be properly called causal are original or efficient causes ; that 
is, actions of sentient beings. The self, therefore, or person- 
ality is the ground, or presupposition, of cause : and thus we 
are once more back at the universal and necessary postulate of 
all certitude, the ego. 

There is another point which has an important bearing on 



BEARING OF EMPIRICISM ON PERSONALITY. 1 89 

this subject. As we have so often said, the steady trend of all 
science is to resolve all phenomena of nature into mass and 
motion, and the one branch of science to which every other 
looks submissively is mechanics. The leaders in it have been 
forward to look into the grounds upon which its conclusions in 
molecular and molar action are based, and have found some 
remarkable things. 

Since the days of Sir Isaac Newton, the march of this branch 
of science has been steady and brilliant. The one concept 
about which the whole system has revolved is ' force ' ; and the 
philosopher, par excellence, of the physical side of nature, has, 
in our day, staked his whole philosophic fabric on the postulate 
of ' Persistent Force.' 

It is important, therefore, that we should consider this 
concept for a moment ; and it will be interesting to note the 
present bearing of science in this respect upon the Spencerian 
philosophy. Professor Tait, in his " Recent Advances in Physi- 
cal Science," speaking of Force, says : "The notion is suggested 
to us directly, by the so-called ' muscular sense/ which gives 
us the feeling of pressure, as when we move a body with our 
hand or foot. But we must be particularly cautious as to the 
way in which we treat the evidence of our senses in such mat- 
ters. Think of Sound and Light, for instance, which, till they 
affect a special organ of sense, are mere wave motions. The 
sensation is as different from the cause in such cases as are the 
bruise and the pain produced by a cudgel or a cricket ball from 
the mere motion of those portions of matter before impact on 
a part of the human body. In all likelihood a similar (prob- 
ably a more sweeping) statement is true of force. 

"The definition of force in physical science is implicitly 
contained in Newton's first Law of Motion, and may thus be 
given : Force is any cause which alters or tends to alter a 
body's state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line. 

" The only difficulty, and it is a serious one, which we feel 



I9O MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

here, is as to the word ' cause ' ; for this, amongst material 
things, usually implies objective existence. Now we have abso- 
lutely no proof of the objective existence of force in the sense 
just explained. In every case in which force is said to act, 
what is really observed, independent of the muscular sense 
(whose indications, like those of the sense of touch in matters 
concerning the temperature of bodies, are apt to be excessively 
misleading), is either a transference, or a tendency to transfer- 
ence, of what is called energy from one portion of matter to 
another. Whenever such a transference takes place, there is 
relative motion of the portions of matter concerned, and the 
so-called force in any direction is merely the rate of transfer- 
ence of energy per unit of length for displacement in that 
direction. Force then has not necessarily objective reality, any 
more than has Velocity or Position. The idea, however, is still 
a very useful one, as it introduces a term which enables us to 
abbreviate statements which would otherwise be long and 
tedious ; but as science advances, it is in all probability des- 
tined to be relegated to that Limbo which has already received 
the Crystal spheres of the Planets, and the Four elements, 
along with Caloric and Phlogiston, the Electric Fluid, and the 
Odic or Psychic Force." 

Under the title ' Mechanics ' in the Britan?iica he treats of 
the question more at large. I quote as follows : " So far we 
have treated of force as acting on a body without inquiring 
whence or why ; we have referred to the first and second laws 
of motion only, and have thus seen only one-half of the phe- 
nomenon. As soon, however, as we turn to the third law, we 
find a new light cast on the question. Force is always dual. 
To every action there is always an equal and contrary reaction. 
Thus, the weight we lift, or try to lift, and the massive gate we 
open, or try to open, both as truly exert force upon our hands 
as we do upon them. This looking to the other side of the 
account, as it were, puts matters in a very different aspect. 



BEARING OF EMPIRICISM ON PERSONALITY. I9I 

1 Do you mean to tell me,' said a medical man of the old 
school, ' that if I pull a "subject " by the hand, it will pull me 
with an equal and opposite force ? ' When he was convinced 
of the truth of this statement, he gave up the objectivity of 
force at once. 

"The third law, in modern phraseology, is simply this: 
Every action betiveen two bodies is a stress. When we pull one 
end of a string, the other end being fixed, we produce what is 
called tension in the string. When we push one end of a beam, 
of which the other end is fixed, we produce what is called 
pressure throughout the beam. . . . But in the case of the 
string, the part of the stress which every portion exerts on the 
adjoining portion is a pull ; in the case of the beam it is a push. 
And all this distribution of stress, though exerted across every 
one of the infinitely numerous cross-sections of the string or 
beam, disappears the moment we let go the end. We can 
thus, by a touch, call into action at will an infinite number of 
stresses, and put them out of existence again as easily. This, 
of itself, is a very strong argument against the supposition that 
force, in any form, can have objective reality. . . . 

" If we inquire carefully into the grounds we have for believ- 
ing that matter (whatever it may be) has objective existence, 
we find that by far the most convincing of them is what may 
be called the l conservation of matter.' This means that, do 
what we will, we cannot alter the mass or the quantity of a por- 
tion of matter. We may change its form, dimensions, state of 
aggregation, etc., or (by chemical processes) we may entirely 
alter its appearance and properties, but its quantity remains 
unchanged. It is this experimental result which has led, by 
the aid of the balance, to the immense developments of modern 
chemistry. If we receive this as evidence of the objective 
reality of matter, we must allow objective reality in anything 
else which we find to be conserved in the same sense as matter 
is conserved. Now there is no such thing as negative mass ; 



192 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

mass is, in mathematical language, a signless quantity. Hence 
the conservation of matter does not contemplate the simultane- 
ous production of equal quantities of positive and negative 
mass, «thus leaving the (algebraic) sum unchanged. But this 
is the nature of the conservation of momentum and of moment 
of momentum. The only other known thing in the physical 
universe, which is conserved in the same sense as matter is 
conserved, is energy. Hence we naturally consider energy as 
the other objective reality in the physical universe, and look to 
it for information as to the true nature of what we call force." 

Such are the reasons from the scientific side for doubting the 
objective reality of force, and for the substantial abandonment 
of the use of the word in scientific treatises. There is still 
much to be said in the same direction from the metaphysical 
side, but let it pass. 

Mr. Herbert Spencer in a note to Chapter VI., " First Prin- 
ciples," tells us that he was in some perplexity in the beginning 
for a satisfactory name for ' the Unconditioned Reality, without 
beginning or end,' which was to serve as the ultimate in his 
system. He could not permit himself to use the word ' energy,' 
since, as he says, " it is impossible to think of ' energy ' without 
something possessing the energy." He expressed to Professor 
Huxley his ' dissatisfaction with the (then) current expression 
" Conservation of Force " : assigning as a reason, first, that the 
word " conservation " implies a conserver and an act of con- 
serving ; and second, that it does not imply the existence of 
the force before the particular manifestation of it which is con- 
templated.' He goes on to say : " I may now add, as a further 
fault, the tacit assumption that, without some act of conserva- 
tion, force would disappear. All these implications are at 
variance with the conception to be conveyed. In place of 
' conservation ' Professor Huxley suggested persistence. This 
meets most of the objections, and though it may be urged 
against it that it does not directly imply pre-existence of the 



BEARING OF EMPIRICISM ON PERSONALITY. I93 

force at any time manifested, yet no other word less faulty in 
this respect can be found. In the absence of a word specially 
coined for the purpose, it seems the best, and as such I 
adopt it." 

It seems the irony of fate, that after the care Mr. Spencer 
has taken not to adopt the word ' energy ' which would carry 
with it the notion of an energizer, and to exclude the word 
' conservation ' lest it should allow of a conserver, that ad- 
vanced science should lose faith in the reality of ' Persistent 
Force,' or any sort of force, and insist upon it that the discarded 
1 energy,' which the philosopher declares cannot be thought of 
'without something possessing it,' is after all the one thing 
which persists ! It only shows the impossibility of arriving at 
the ultimate in the realm of things. But in fairness to Mr. 
Spencer, it must be said that he has done much to guard him- 
self against the charge of erecting his splendid fabric on noth- 
ing as a foundation, even though there be no such thing as 
1 Persistent Force.' For he has qualified the phrase in a way 
which gives it an undoubted somewhat as a content. He says, 
in the chapter in which the phrase is introduced, that ' By the 
Persistence of Force, we really mean the persistence of some 
cause which transcends our knowledge and conception.' ' In 
asserting it we assert an Unconditioned Reality, without begin- 
ning or end.' 

This definition is thoroughly satisfactory, and no metaphysi- 
cian or theologian can reasonably ask more : but the trouble is 
that it has been too much left out of sight, and the common 
mind has accepted the phrase, ' persistent force,' as the symbol 
for something dead and unintelligent. Mr. Spencer perhaps 
never entertained such a notion, — certain it is that he now 
earnestly repudiates such a construction. He now holds that 
his ultimate ' Cause which transcends our knowledge and con- 
ception,' is an ' Infinite and Eternal Energy.' How he differs 
affirmatively in this regard from the most rigid theologian, I 



194 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

am unable to see. His words are clear and sweeping : ' I held 
at the outset, and continue to hold, that the Inscrutable Exist- 
ence, which science in the last resort is compelled to recognize 
as unreached by its deepest analysis of matter, motion, thought, 
and feeling, stands towards our general conception of things in 
substantially the same relation as does the Creative Power 
asserted by Theology.' Negatively, he hesitates to apply the 
appellation ' Person ' to this ' Inscrutable Existence,' — this 
' Infinite and Eternal Energy,' lest he should limit it. He 
would not degrade the Unknown Cause of things below per- 
sonality, but raise it higher. Well, that is, I take it, just what 
the theologian would do. He simply does not know how, any 
more than Mr. Spencer, — he does the best he can, however ; 
and herein seems to be the only difference between the two. 
In the ' Unknown All-Being ' we cannot but recognize the 
Christian's 'Lord of All Power and Might' 

This is a matter of so much moment that the reader will not, 
I hope, feel impatient if we stop a little longer on it. And the 
question to be asked is this : Is the reason Mr. Spencer gives 
for denying personality to that which he does not now hesitate 
to call energy, really valid ? He says that, ' On raising an ob- 
ject from the ground, we are obliged to think of its downward 
pull as equal and opposite to our upward pull ; and although it 
is impossible to represent these as equal without representing 
them as like in kind ; yet, since their likeness in kind would 
imply in the object a sensation of muscular tension, which can- 
not be ascribed to it, we are compelled to admit that force as 
it exists out of our consciousness, is not force as we know it. 
Hence the force of which we assert persistence is that Abso- 
lute Force of which we are indefinitely conscious as the neces- 
sary correlate of the force we know.' 

Since, however, Mr. Spencer now freely uses the word 
' energy ' in a sense, it is to be presumed, he would not have 
used it thirty years ago, it is fair to assume that he would not 



BEARING OF EMPIRICISM ON PERSONALITY. I95 

now contend that ' force as it exists out of our consciousness 
is not force as we know it,' and that, if it were to be done over, 
he would hardly think the distinction so certain or so essential 
as to be made the ultimate ground of a system of Philosophy. 
In point of fact, the definition he gives of his fundamental 
phrase is so much larger than a fair construction of the phrase 
itself would warrant, that there does not seem to have been 
any pressing need for it at all ; and when it is further taken 
into account, that it is at best but a factitious phrase, in the 
beginning unsatisfactory to the philosopher himself, we may be 
permitted to regret that it was given such emphasis and impor- 
tance. The ground of such regret is that, while the author of 
this stupendous system has been at great pains from the begin- 
ning, not to shut up the way towards the very highest spiritual 
(non-material) conception of the Universe, there is nevertheless 
an atmosphere everywhere pervading it, which admits of, and 
to the general reader seems inevitably to lead to, the thought 
of a soulless and dead source and spring of all things. It is 
to be freely admitted, I repeat, that such a charge cannot in 
justice lie against Mr. Spencer, though he saw and expressed 
the danger of such a misconception ; and it is to be regretted, 
that his hostile critics have not dwelt more upon the phase 
which makes for the truth as they see it, and less upon that 
which is so obnoxious to them. Any number of passages 
could be quoted to show the anxiety of Mr. Spencer not to be 
set down as a materialist, but take the following, from the last 
chapter of " First Principles " : " The liability to misrepresenta- 
tion is so great, that notwithstanding all evidence to the con- 
trary, there will probably have arisen in not a few minds, the 
conviction that the solutions which have been given, along with 
those to be derived from them, are essentially materialistic. . . . 
Men who have not risen above that vulgar conception which 
unites with matter the contemptuous epithet ' gross ' and 
' brute/ may naturally feel dismay at the proposal to reduce 



I96 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

the phenomenon of Life, of Mind, and of Society to a level with 
those which they think so degraded. But whoever remembers 
that the forms of existence which the uncultivated speak of 
with so much scorn, are shown by the man of science to be the 
more marvellous in their attributes the more they are investi- 
gated, and are also proved to be in their ultimate natures abso- 
lutely incomprehensible — as absolutely incomprehensible as 
sensation, or the conscious something which perceives it ; 
whoever clearly recognizes this truth, will see that the course 
proposed does not imply a degradation of the so-called higher, 
but an elevation of the so-called lower. . . . Being fully con- 
vinced that whatever nomenclature is used, the ultimate mys- 
tery must remain the same, he will be as ready to formulate all 
phenomena in terms of Matter, Motion, and Force, as in any 
other terms ; and will rather indeed anticipate, that only in a 
doctrine which recognizes the Unknown Cause as co-extensive 
with all orders of phenomena can there be a consistent Relig- 
ion or a consistent Philosophy." 

This is clear and strong, but it will be quite worth while to 
hear him speak further upon this point ; and I am under a very 
false conviction if the greater part of those who talk either for 
or against Herbert Spencer are not practical exemplifications 
of the truth of the first phrase of what follows, speaking in 
ignorance, or in total disregard, of the statement which it intro- 
duces. He says : " Though it is impossible to prevent mis- 
representations, especially when the questions involved are of a 
kind that excite so much animus, yet to guard against them as 
far as may be, it will be well to make a succinct and emphatic 
re-statement of the Philosophico-Religious doctrine which per- 
vades the foregoing pages. Over and over again it has been 
shown in various ways, that the deepest truths we can reach 
are simply statements of the widest uniformities in our expe- 
rience of the relations of Matter, Motion, and Force ; and that 
Matter, Motion, and Force are but symbols of the Unknown. 



BEARING OF EMPIRICISM ON PERSONALITY. K)J 

Reality. A Power of which the nature remains forever incon- 
ceivable, and to which no limits in Time or Space can be im- 
agined, works in us certain effects. These effects have certain 
likenesses of connection, the most constant of which we class 
as laws of the highest certainty. The interpretation of all 
phenomena in terms of Matter, Motion, and Force, is nothing 
more than the reduction of our complex symbols of thought 
to the simplest symbols ; and when the equation has been 
brought to its lowest terms the symbols remain symbols still. 
Hence the reasonings contained in the foregoing pages afford 
no support to either of the antagonistic hypotheses respecting 
the ultimate nature of things. Their implications are no more 
materialistic than they are spiritualistic ; and no more spiritu- 
alistic than they are materialistic. Any argument which is 
apparently furnished to either hypothesis, is neutralized by as 
good an argument furnished to the other. The materialist, 
seeing it to be a necessary deduction from the law of correla- 
tion, that what exists in consciousness under the form of feel- 
ing, is transferable into an equivalent of mechanical motion, 
and by consequence into equivalents of all the other forces 
which matter exhibits, may consider it therefore demon- 
strated that the phenomena of consciousness are material phe- 
nomena. But the spiritualist, setting out with the same data, 
may argue with equal cogency, that if the forces displayed by 
matter are cognizable only under the shape of those equivalent 
amounts of consciousness which they produce, it is to be in- 
ferred that these forces, when existing out of consciousness, are 
of the same intrinsic nature as when existing in consciousness, 
and that so is justified the spiritualistic conception of the ex- 
ternal world, as consisting of something essentially identical 
with what we call mind. Manifestly, the establishment of 
correlation and equivalence between the forces of the outer 
and the inner worlds, may be used to assimilate either to the 
other, according as we set out with one or the other term. But 



I98 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

he who rightly interprets the doctrine contained in this work, 
will see that neither of these terms can be taken as ultimate. 
He will see that though the relation of subject and object ren- 
ders necessary to us these antithetical conceptions of Spirit and 
Matter, the one is no less than the other to be regarded as but 
a sign of the Unknown Reality which underlies both." 

These are the final sentences of Mr. Spencer's first work on 
Philosophy. It is manifestly unjust to say that he is consciously 
either a materialist or a spiritualist, though since he says that 
the antithetical concepts of Spirit and Matter are necessary to 
us, it should seem that he must be both. It ends with an ex- 
plicit declaration of the certainty of that ultimate Reality of 
which he has never for a moment lost sight, — a Reality which 
he nevertheless continues to qualify by the adjective, Unknown. 
But how unknown ? Plainly not in the sense of the un-thought 
upon, and not in the sense of the non-existent. It is not so 
unknown as that he could not make a book about It, — not so 
unknown as not to be a certainty, a Reality, a Cause, a Power, 
a Force, — to have Persistence, and some way of manifesting 
itself in the modes of Matter, Motion, and Mind. That this 
ultimate Reality may be so far known (and do these specializa- 
tions include all the phenomena of the universe?) and yet 
remain unknown in many ways, admits of no question ; but the 
same is equally true of the philosopher himself. He is un- 
doubtedly well known to his friends, and to all the world, but 
is he not, in many respects, especially in his ultimate nature, 
utterly unknown? Is there anything which, in like regard, is 
not unknown ? How then can he mean that his ultimate Reality 
is unknown, except in this same ultimate aspect? And if this 
be the sense in which we are to construe this formidable adjec- 
tive, what is it but to say that the unknowable is unknown? If 
this be the attitude of Agnosticism, then we are all Agnostics. 



FEELING. 199 



CHAPTER XIX. 

FEELING. 

Classification. Pain and pleasure. Sensuous Feeling. Herbartian 
scheme. Intensity and quality in feeling. Ccenesthisia. Esoteric and 
Exoteric feeling. The one working from within emerges in the under- 
standing ; the other built up through the understanding. Practical 
bearing. 

AS was absolutely necessary, in treating of cognition we had 
constantly to assume, and in some sort discuss, sensation 
and will. Indeed, sensation has had almost as much consider- 
ation as the cognitive power, while in the physiological treat- 
ment it was altogether dominant. 

Sensation, lying as it does at the threshold of consciousness, 
is to be considered — if we are to give order of precedence to 
these ever varying factors — as the foundation of all emotive 
activity, with volition as the apex. 

Separating the sentient element, as far as we may, from the 
other modes of personality, we can construct a pyramid which 
shall roughly exhibit the principal phases of feeling, of which 
sensation in its lowest, unspecialized form must serve as the 
base, as in the figure on the following page. 

What is meant by sensation in this basic sense, will be suf- 
ficiently understood from what has gone before. It is, so to 
speak, the blind response given through the nervous organism 
to stimuli of whatever nature from without. It is not yet feel- 
ing in any true sense, not yet being sufficiently differentiated 
to be construed in consciousness. 

Out of this vital soil, if I may so say, the tree of feeling 



200 



MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 



springs, with its many branches spreading out into twigs and foli- 
age in infinite variety. There is no possibility of knowing what 
sensation is, and to ask the question is to ask how the question 
itself can be asked. It is given us, as it is given the protozoa ; 
and we have but to accept it, and be thankful. We can note, 
however, the varying phases of this fundamental factor of the 



EXOTERIC 



ESOTERIC 



WILL = GOOD 



SENSIBILITY^ BEAUTY 




COGNITION = TRUTH 



VITAL 
FUNCTIONS 



living organism ; and we see that in the earliest stages of 
vitality, the development seems to be carried on through sen- 
sation, with resulting movement. At what point in the scale 
of animate being ideation and purposive movement discover 
themselves, none can certainly say. It is not, however, until 
these appear that sensation rises from its elementary form into 
a complex whole, gradually becoming more and more com- 



FEELING. 20I 

posite, until at last, infinitely complicated, it becomes what is 
rightly called feeling. 

Sensation, with its primitive features and functions, is never 
absent in the higher forms of the scale ; but still exerts its sub- 
conscious energy, just as the foundations of a building ever 
continue to send upward their reactions to capstone and pin- 
nacle, though out of sight and unthought upon. 

What physiology can tell us of sensory and motor actions 
and reactions throws no light upon what feeling really is. It 
is, as has been said, rather a matter of being than of knowl- 
edge, and gets its meaning through the understanding. Why 
it is that a bitter taste is disagreeable, and the appeasing of 
hunger pleasant, admits of no real answer. The physiologist 
may show that the one affects favorably, and the other unfavor- 
ably, the development of tissue, and so hinders or helps the 
body with respect to its harmonious action ; — but while this 
shows that the one effect is hurtful to a certain end, and the 
other helpful, it throws no light upon why pain accompanies 
the one, and pleasure the other. 

It may be well, however, to look at the question of pleasure 
and pain a moment, from a teleological point of view, i.e. as to 
the ends they subserve. 

The world is full of people who are constantly declaiming 
against the fact that there is any such thing as pain at all ; and 
in these last days, certain sciolists, taking this fact as a text, 
talk wretched nonsense, to speak of it in the mildest terms, 
about ' a bad God ' for allowing it. They do not seem to know 
that if there were no pain, there could be no pleasure, — no 
satisfaction of any kind, since pleasure could then have no lim- 
itations, and would fall out of recognition. That would be bad 
enough, but would only be the beginning of the disaster : there 
could be no sensation of any sort, and no knowledge. Man 
would be reduced to a senseless mass of inert matter, — if even 
this could be the end of it. 



202 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

Pleasure and pain are not ' things/ but feelings, utterly incom- 
municable. A thought — any kind of knowledge proper (for 
feeling, though by its nature inseparable numerically from 
thought, is not thought, and must be translated into thought 
before it can become knowledge) — may be communicated or 
shared with another ; not so feeling. If pleasure were not so 
transferred to the cognitive mode of the self, it would be, for 
us, as though it were not. But we have seen that any concept, 
to be known, must be negated, and the negative of pleasure is 
pain ; so that if pain were impossible, satisfaction would be also. 
One could not maintain one's existence without this much 
maligned element of our nature. In some careless moment, 
one would burn up, without knowing what was going on ; starve, 
not knowing oneself to be hungry; and so throughout the 
round of life. Pleasures are not ends in any sense to be pur- 
sued, nor is suffering a calamity, per se, to be avoided. They 
are accessory to ends which are higher than pleasure ; and are 
warnings against calamity more dreadful than pain in its direst 
form. 

That pleasure and pain are only known in relation is shown 
by the fact that a diminished pleasure is a pain, and a dimin- 
ished pain a thoroughly recognizable satisfaction. The con- 
trast may vary through many stages. That which gives one 
pleasure to-day may be the source of pain to-morrow. It is 
the relation which determines the degree. A sum of money 
lost, or gained, produces a vastly different feeling at one time, 
and another. The indulgence of an appetite may be highly 
satisfactory at night, while horrors may be the result in the 
morning. 

Sensuous Feeling, the lowest form of sentient energy which 
can be rightly called feeling at all, embraces all specialized 
sensations as to place and kind, — all agreeable and disagreea- 
ble tastes and smells ; all the recognized affections of the self 



FEELING. 203 

through the special and general senses, — in short, all bodily 
affections which give rise to satisfaction or infelicity. 

As we have seen, feeling to be known must be translated 
into thought ; and so psychologists of the Herbartian school 
work out a very complete scheme to account for the play of the 
emotive nature in what they call ' furthering ' and ' arresting ' 
concepts. The state of consciousness is like the rapid changes 
which we often see in the clouds under the action of cross cur- 
rents in the air. New concepts are constantly rising to contest 
the place -of the old. These do not yield without resistance ; 
the new and the old meet with every variety in force and 
direction, the main divisions supported by many auxiliary 
forces on either side ; and so the contest, sometimes in com- 
parative peace and gentleness, and at others, with rapid and 
violent movement, but never ending, goes on through life. 
Assuming that there is a measurably constant quality of psy- 
chical energy when no arresting concepts are present, the flow 
is regular, and there is a general feeling of satisfaction ; when a 
new concept acts with the current, a positive pleasure ; but 
arrest gives rise to a partial stoppage, which is depressing or 
painful. A feeling is thus the consciousness of the furthering, 
or arrest, of the flow of thought, — pleasurable if it be with, 
painful if it be against, this movement. 

This still does not really tell us anything of what feeling is. 
It but gives us the thought-basis of feeling, or the manifesta- 
tions in thought, as the feeling may come from the lower or 
higher states of the self; but these are not feeling itself, any 
more than the action of sensory and motor nerves are sensa- 
tion. 

It is hardly necessary to enter, in any detail, upon the ques- 
tion as to how localization of sensations by which they gain 
character and rise into the light of consciousness, take place. 
The writers on the side of scientific psychology, such as Her- 
bart, Bain, Wundt, and Spencer, have gone over the ground 



204 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

with infinite pains, and with such completeness of detail, as 
would prove wearisome to the general reader, even in outline, 
with no corresponding profit. 

We pass on to a summary of a more general character. The 
gustatory senses, taste and smell, the lowest in the scale for 
scope and variety, are chiefly charged with the duty of provis- 
ioning the physical organism. They afford the basic motives 
which, taken with the pains of appetite, induce original effort. 
Food is made pleasant to the palate, or we could not main- 
tain our existence. If a resistance had to be overconte at every 
morsel which enters the mouth, or if it were a matter of indif- 
ference, the child would have to be forced to take nourishment, 
or rather, could not be made to take it at all, and would die at 
the start. It would be no better with the adult, if any there 
could ever be. The teleological value then of pleasure in the 
reception of food is plainly manifest. It is perhaps not too 
much to say, that many people seem to be satisfied that they 
have found the end and object of life, at this mere threshold of 
existence, and make ends of what are simply means. 

It is to be noted, that in the pleasures of the palate there is 
the same ascending scale which we have found everywhere, 
and which will continue to meet us as we go on. In the be- 
ginning of life only the simplest flavors and savors are pleasant. 
The child resists vigorously nearly all condiments, such as pep- 
per, mustard, and the higher spices which the cultivated palate 
finds quite necessary to remove insipidity ; so that finally the 
highest satisfaction of the gustatory sense lies clearly in the 
domain which at the earlier stage would be pronounced de- 
cidedly painful. In the lower plane, the stimuli are gentle, 
becoming more intense as we ascend. This difference in gra- 
dation is called ' quantity ' or ' intensity.' 

All pleasures and pains have this quantitative characteristic. 
Any sensation raised beyond a certain point, differing for dif- 
ferent persons, passes from pleasure into pain, or the reverse. 



FEELING. 205 

These limits cannot be definitely fixed, and are not constant. 
In sound, if the attention has to be strained, or if there remain 
vagueness and uncertainty, the effect is unpleasant ; if raised 
beyond a certain degree of loudness, it is also painful. Between 
the two lies agreeableness, reaching the maximum at the point 
where there is an easy flow without stress upon the organism. 
With light it is the same ; and so with the tactual or any other 
sense. 

But this point of maximum agreeableness does not remain 
stationary in the same organism for any considerable time. 
The same unvarying sensation long continued, though alto- 
gether agreeable at first, becomes monotonous, and even pain- 
ful. This characteristic is called the ' duration.' Sensation 
must not be too short, for then there is a baffled feeling ; 
it must not be too long, or weariness results. Continued uni- 
formity is impossible. Even an acute sensation is greatly 
abated by long continuance, so that at last it almost passes out 
of consciousness. Thus there is a constant adjustment of the 
organism to defeat continuance of either pleasure or pain. 

There is also what is called ' quality ' in feeling. This refers 
to the kinds of stimuli whence the feeling arises. There is a 
marked difference between a pleasure due to sensation through 
touch, and one granting the degree of satisfaction the same, 
through sight. Sir William Hamilton, following Kant, main- 
tains that there is an inverse ratio between feeling and knowl- 
edge, that in the senses beginning with touch, in which sensa- 
tion is at a maximum, there is a marked diminution up to sight, 
in which the sensuous element is no longer distinguishable ; 
while, on the other hand, cognition is at a minimum in touch, 
and sensation at a maximum. So it is, in general, in the rela- 
tion between feeling and thought. In the higher stages of feel- 
ing, the sensuous factor almost, or entirely, drops out, so far as 
discoverable in consciousness. A scale arranged on this basis 
would give us differences in ' quality.' 



206 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

Mention has already been made of what is called the ' sensus 
communis,' or 'common feeling/ falling under the general 
head of ccenesthesia. A word or two only will be necessary 
here. The feeling of buoyancy, or depression, plays a very 
conspicuous part in every one's life ; and it is, therefore, of 
great practical importance. It has been called the massive 
or voluminous sense ; perhaps because one has such a large 
opinion of oneself when everything seems to go one's own 
way. The flow of the intellectual and emotional life is in full 
sweep, the countenance cheerful ; and, if one be young, or fail 
to exercise a dignified restraint if old, gladness breaks out in 
laughter and frolics. It is the joy of living. The reverse state, 
known generally as the ' dumps,' or ' blues,' presents a melan- 
choly contrast. The world is out of joint, last friend gone, 
the bottom fallen out, etc., and all from no other reason 
than the depression of general tone. If, however, these results 
are due, as they may be, to known causes, they are removed 
from this classification. 

The sensations due to specific touch also belong to this class 
of Sensuous Feeling, such as soft, smooth, rasping, etc. Many 
people show marked peculiarities connected with this lower 
form of feeling. Some organisms are very disagreeably affected 
by the touch of velvet, the fuzz of a peach, and many like 
substances. Also by certain perfumes and flavors. The effects 
are sometimes uncontrollable and violent. All that can be 
said is, that these effects seem to be due to idiosyncrasies of 
organism. 

There is a marked difference between the lower group of the 
senses, — touch, taste, smell, as well as all the newly discovered 
senses, — and the higher group, hearing and sight. Sensation 
excited by stimulating any one of the lower group is purely 
subjective, and has localization within the body; on the other 
hand, sensation in the higher group has an objective character, 
the localization being external to the body. For this reason the 



FEELING. 207 

lower class of sensations may be called ' Esoteric,' and the 
higher class ' Exoteric' In the esoteric class the feeling excited 
carries with it the consciousness of the mechanism, or instru- 
ment of sensation ; in the exoteric, on the contrary, the feeling 
is quite independent of any consciousness of bodily affection. 
Thus, in the flavor of an orange, I am conscious of the taste in 
the mouth; but with the color of a violet, consciousness de- 
clares the color to be, not in the eye, but in the flower itself. 

This difference marks an important distinction between the 
entire domain of ' Sensuous Feeling,' and that immense range 
above, which we have called the ' Rational,' ' Esthetic,' and 
Moral Feelings. In the one case we have feeling, simply 
recognized as existing ; in the other, there is no proper feeling 
at all, until perception of that which is without produces a 
reaction in the sensibilities : that is, in sensuousness, the sense 
element is primary and the intellectual element secondary : in 
the higher range, the thought element is primary, and the 
emotional element secondary. 

This has an important practical bearing, since it thus appears 
that, in the psychical factor of the personality, there are two 
well-marked domains of feeling ; the one essentially funda- 
mental, as pertaining and ministering to the animal mechanism ; 
the other, acquired through self-activity, is characteristic of the 
psychical factor of the personality. Feeling, from the lower 
plane, is simply forced upon the personality, and suffers very 
little modification ; feeling, from the higher domain, is sec- 
ondary, being derived through the rational efforts of the self, 
and depending upon it for its infinitely various shades of refine- 
ment and intensity. The one comes from below, and is com- 
mon to man and the lower animals ; the other comes from 
above, and is the peculiar heritage of man alone. The true 
work of a rational creature is, negatively, to regulate and hold 
himself in check with respect to esoteric feeling ; positively, to 
expand, refine, and elevate his nature in the domain of exoteric 



208 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

sensibility. Yielding to the one, he becomes a slave and ret- 
rogrades towards mere animality ; cultivating the other, he rises 
into freedom and lives upon the heights. 

The three main divisions of that class of Feeling which I 
have ventured to call Exoteric are specialized, each, by one of 
the three fundamental modes of the Self: thus Rational Feel- 
ing finds its characteristic in Cognition, with Truth as its con- 
tent ; Esthetic Feeling in Sensation, with the Beautiful as its 
content ; while Moral Feeling is dependent on the Will, and has 
the Good as its content. Now as there is an underlying unity 
in the three several notes which give character, respectively, to 
these different forms of feeling, so we cannot but think there 
must be unity, also, in their content ; the ultimate ground of 
all being the one Infinite Personality. 

The primitive desires of our nature are founded essentially 
in Esoteric Feeling. They are blind, and ray out in every 
direction, seeking satisfaction. In their original activities they 
are, in a moral point of view, neither good nor bad, — have no 
moral quality whatever. But experience soon teaches us that 
the unbridled indulgence of these original propulsions results 
in pain and injury, and we are compelled to practise self- 
restraint. This is the beginning of personal development, — 
the ' Thou shalt not ' of personality. 

But there is another class of desires, the Exoteric, built up 
through the objective senses, by means of cognition and will. 
Such desires are not absolutely independent of esoteric feeling, 
— there never can be any possible emotive activity that is ; 
but they have an objective character, and come into us, so to 
speak, from without, by our own conscious activity, instead of 
being beforehand with consciousness, as is the case with the 
esoteric class. Such are the desires for power, wealth, learn- 
ing, fame, and all the ends for which men strive, and to which 
they attribute value, from a discovery of their meaning. The 
character and intensity of these desires will depend upon the 



FEELING. 209 

values discovered to be in them, or rightly or wrongly assigned 
them by the power of the understanding, and the determina- 
tion to pursue or turn away from them. In the beginning, the 
emotive element with respect to them is feeble, and it is in 
man's power to keep it so ; but it is also in his power to increase 
it, not directly, it is true, but indirectly, by dwelling upon, and 
establishing more firmly in the mind, the worth and importance 
to him of the particular end which the desire subserves. The 
effect of environment in this work of building up the emotive 
phase of personality is obvious. Parents, teachers, societies, 
are constantly emphasizing the several ends which seem to them 
of paramount importance ; and the child, the youth, the man, 
has borne in upon him true or false values, which being as- 
sented to or repelled by him, develop his emotive nature, and 
so the personality, for better or for worse. This of course 
involves the regulation and control, as well, of the esoteric 
class of desires. They, by proper handling, may be greatly 
refined and elevated ; but so long as the vital tides are strong, 
they continue to move us vigorously towards their blind ends ; 
and so, we find the best of men, in moments of weakness or 
under abnormal temptations, thrown off their balance, and 
yielding to what is in glaring conflict with their higher natures. 

Passion is a temporary release, and abnormal stimulation of 
the lower desires. 

In the nature of the case, we cannot know what ultimate 
Truth is, since we should be compelled, in a final analysis, to 
explain it by means of itself. When we say, therefore, that 
the ground of Rational Feeling is the True, we have reached 
the utmost limit in the way of explanation, and must turn back 
and content ourselves with the divers forms under which it 
presents itself to our powers of apprehension. By virtue of 
our human personality we do apprehend it, with more or less 
readiness and certainty, and, so apprehending, love it, with vary- 
ing degrees of intensity, depending primarily on our native 



2IO MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

susceptibility, but perhaps more largely in the degree and qual- 
ity of the development in us of what we have called exoteric 
sensibility. Rational Feeling is thus an immediate response of 
the self to discovered truth, just as the sense of touch is the 
response to an external stimulus. 

But the important distinction must be borne in mind that a 
sensation coming to us through the stimulation of any one of 
these esoteric senses is immediate, and the function of the 
understanding is to construe it ; while in the higher feeling no 
sensation comes or can come to us until it has first passed 
through the scrutiny of the understanding. The self-developed 
sensibilities then respond according to the character and degree 
of such development, and independently of volitional control. 

The question as to what is true is purely a matter of the 
understanding, and its conclusions vary through a large range 
for the same person at different stages of enlightenment, and 
through a larger range for different persons, under varying cir- 
cumstances of time, place, and education. The understanding, 
however, having once pronounced, the developed sensibilities 
respond at once upon the presentation of the proper thought 
stimuli; and thus it is that the same subject or thing affects 
different persons, or the same person at different times, so 
variously. 



FEELING. 211 



CHAPTER XX. 

feeling (continued). 

Rational feeling. Esthetic feeling. Beauty. Periodic motion. Music. 
Vision. Illusions. Berkeley's 'Theory of Vision.' Knowledge through 
vision. Cheselden's Case. Other cases. Problems mentioned. 

' ITy ATIONAL Feeling ' is that satisfaction which arises in 
IV us from the discovery of the reasonableness of things, — 
a sense of harmony among varying phenomena ; and, on the other 
hand, the annoyance and perturbation resulting from a baffled 
effort to find the law, which we somehow know obtains, though 
not yet recognized. The sensation is one of effort, resulting, 
if effective, in an exaltation, — a feeling of victory and triumph : 
if unsuccessful, in a sense of impotence and disappointment. 
The self, by reason of an inborn energy, tries always to solve 
difficulties, and find the key to phenomena ; if the effort be 
baffled, there results a sense of failure which shows itself in fret- 
fulness. When once an inquiry is raised, and there is sufficient 
interest engaged, the self is never satisfied until the relation 
between phenomena is clear. Confusion is a source of annoy- 
ance, and is resisted. When the clew seems at hand, we are 
pervaded by a pleasurable eagerness, — a feeling which every 
one has experienced in solving a mathematical problem, or 
working out a puzzle. So, also, we often feel surprise and 
bewilderment in the prosecution of an inquiry. 

The ground of the emotion in all this vast domain is intel- 
lectual ; and the end toward which it moves us is truth. It has 
been called by psychologists, ' Logical Feeling,' and also ' Formal 



212 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

Feeling.' It is especially dominant in scientific inquiries, result- 
ing from the exercise of the 'Scientific Imagination.' 

In ' Esthetic Feeling ' the ground is Sensation ; but it is Sen- 
sation projected upon reality without, in space- and time-forms. 
It is essentially a somewhat felt — Rational Feeling being a 
somewhat understood. We perceive the beautiful in form and 
tone, through Esthetic phenomena, — we conceive the True 
through the relation of things and events. 

By the logical powers we comprehend the meaning of the 
external world, and find a response in our emotional nature 
which loves the True : — without stopping to construe or ask 
why, we see and hear in the world without what is pleasing to 
eye and ear. One is a pleasing thought ; the other is a pleas- 
ing sensation. Thus, in a general way, the Beautiful is the 
object of Esthetic Feeling; while Rational Feeling finds its 
satisfaction in the True. 

Now it is not to be seriously doubted that Truth and Beauty 
are bound together by an indissoluble tie, and that, to an intelli- 
gence sufficiently exalted, the true would always appear beauti- 
ful, and the beautiful true. As it is, we can discover something 
of this nexus. 

We have already seen, in speaking of the senses from the 
physiological point of view, that vibration is the physical basis 
of the sensation of sound. The sense of hearing occupies an 
especially important place as opening the way to the whole 
rationale of science, in the all-embracing doctrine of undula- 
tions. The motions in sound phenomena are of such a slug- 
gish character, that they can be made apparent to the eye 
and touch, and yet it can hardly- be said that vibrations are 
known at all to the hearing. Whenever pulsations reach a suf- 
ficient frequency to produce a continuous sound or tone, the 
vibratory character is swallowed up in, or rather, is, for the 
feeling, the tone itself. 

It is through this doorway of sound that we get a look into 



FEELING. 213 

the rhythmic wonders of creation, and have at the same time an 
exemplification of Rational and Esthetic Feeling. It is here that 
we catch the first glimpse of that magic and mystery of motion 
which has come to be the scientific postulate of all possible 
phenomena, and which is the only explanation science has to 
give for sound, light, heat, electricity, — the heavens and the 
earth. We look not with the eye, but the imagination, and see 
periodic motion — motion back and forth — in circles and 
ellipses and straight lines, — in parabolas and hyperbolas, — in 
every conceivable variety of the conic curves, — all keeping 
time in a sort of a rhythmic dance ; and this is sound. What 
possible likeness is there between the feeling excited by a flute 
note, and the rapid swaying in and out, from one oval shape to 
another, of the embrasure into which the air is breathed, and 
the witches' dance of air particles caused within the tube ! What 
possible nexus in thought is there between the delicate tints of 
the violet, and the million times more rapid scurry to and fro of 
the luminiferous ether ! This is strain enough upon one's fancy, 
but when we are required to see in the solid and immovable 
door-knob, nothing but an infinite play of vortical motion, and 
admit the deadest of all dead matter to be but motionless 
motion, old-fashioned common sense feels abashed. When we 
have got this far it seems too late for one to cast scorn upon 
the famous inventor, who, it is said, expects to propel an ocean 
steamer across the Atlantic, with the movements of a fiddle 
bow ! 

But, not to quite lose ourselves in this mazy world, if we like 
not to give in to the demands of science, we shall find great 
difficulty to discover a place where we can halt, and say, ' thus 
far and no farther.' We shall be beaten back until all explana- 
tion must be abandoned, and find ourselves in that other world 
of magic, so familiar to the nursery. We are compelled to fall 
in and move with this ' fleeting show,' finding it after all the 
same old commonplace world ; only convinced that we do not 



214 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

know as much as we thought, before we tried to look beneath 
the surface of things. 

One thing seems plain through all this wonderland; and 
it is that periodic movement lies at the bottom of it. This 
is the rational basis of what we call rhythm. This rhythm is, 
however, infinite in variety, so that perfect uniformity, perfect 
agreement, is never to be found. 

If I may so express it, nothing in the Universe exactly fits. 
It is a trite saying that no two shells on the seashore are alike, 
and no two leaves upon the trees ; much less are any two faces 
— any two voices — any two thoughts, — alike. Likeness is no 
more a law of the Universe than difference ; harmony no more 
discovers itself than dissonance ; except that we are compelled 
to recognize the one as positive and the other negative. In the 
movements of the heavenly bodies there seem to be no two 
exactly commensurate. The period of the revolution of the 
earth upon its axis is no exact part of the periodic time of the 
earth around the sun ■ nor is this period exactly measured by 
any other of the celestial revolutions. In music we have the 
same thing. The notes of the diatonic scale do not present 
perfect agreement in intervals. There is ' the little rift ' — always 
a little too much, or not quite enough. There is no ' dead 
point ' in the mechanism of the All-Father. He is the ' One 
in the Many,' and the ' Many in One ' ; and whatever comes 
from His Hand defies the ultimate scrutiny of man. 

Writers generally are pretty well agreed in ranking light 
above hearing, and no doubt they are right, considered from a 
utilitarian point of view ; but it may be seriously questioned 
from the sentient and emotional standpoint. Remove speech 
and music from the world, and with them would go perhaps 
the larger part of esthetic enjoyment. The range of the audi- 
tory sense is far greater than that of sight. The octave above 
octave finds nothing like it in any other sense. We do not 
know, and cannot conceive, what the spectacular effect would be 



FEELING. 215 

if light built itself up, tier on tier, like music ; though it is 
possible that in higher orders of being such color-effects may 
actually obtain. But certain it is, that the heart and imagina- 
tion, through this wonderful fact in sound, are wrought up to 
diviner heights than can be produced through the eye. Not 
only has sound this marked advantage over sight in altitude, 
but its advantage in expanse is almost as remarkable. Sight 
takes in only one-half the circumference about us, and that 
imperfectly, but hearing embraces the whole circle. The eye 
must be directed by muscular movement, — the ear is always 
ready to respond to whatever is within the radius of its power. 
The pleasure given one through the ear is largely augmented 
by cultivation. There is the same ascent from the simple to 
the complex which we have noted in the senses already consid- 
ered. At first the simple unison of sounds is a delight ; and 
the untutored ear enjoys harmonies which are open or far 
apart. Two persons singing together, one an octave above the 
other, give the untaught ear satisfaction, but not for long ; then 
the fifths and the thirds. The ' chord of the tonic ' is a 
joy; but, after a sufficient cultivation, a closer harmony is 
demanded, until at last, positive discords greatly heighten the 
effect. So, again, in melody, the succession must be simple, 
and the recurrence of passages frequent, to engage the inter- 
est of the multitude. If there is no ' tune,' the attention 
flags, and, instead of pleasure, positive distress results. Hence 
it is that the populace are always calling for simple airs, in 
which the rhythm is so marked as to carry head and feet with 
the movement ; while the sonatas of Beethoven and the mas- 
sive harmonies of Wagner are a mystification and a torture; 
but for the cultured ear, tune is no necessity, and the divine 
productions of the great masters produce a 'joy of elevated 
thought.' The simple child-like satisfaction — more the result 
of an exuberance ready to burst forth at any sign — gives place 
to a rational elevation, which revels in minor effects, and causes 



2l6 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

the emotional nature to stand on tiptoe, striving vainly to look 
into the infinite and mystical, with a 'joy which is akin to woe.' 
Feeling thus mounts up, as if to seek another world, and 
pleasure and pain strike hands. 

Sensation in Vision is extremely complex. Undoubtedly 
light — marvellously rich in color components — and its nega- 
tion, darkness, with its infinite gradations of shade and shadow, 
furnish the material out of which the self evolves beauty of 
form and symmetry, with all the charming effects in color. 
How, is quite another question, and raises many points by no 
means settled. There is difficulty enough in determining how 
the eye acquaints us with the mere facts of the external world, 
without the farther inquiry as to how the emotive elements of 
grace and beauty emerge. It is not to be seriously questioned, 
— no system of Idealism will ever change the conviction that 
there is an objective reality which answers to the feeling of 
truth and beauty in the mind. As Lotze says, " There is an 
inherent order in things : the forms which they lead us to real- 
ize or to rejoice in as manifested in nature, are modes of rela- 
tion of the manifold into the joy of which we are able to enter." 
He carries the thought further : " Just as there is no sense- 
perception without its share of feeling, so, too, the notion of a 
relationship never rises within us without our testing the special 
degree of pleasure or of pain which this relationship must 
confer on the two things between which it exists. We never 
notice identity without at least a faint recollection of the bless- 
edness of peace, or see contrast without a glimpse, sometimes 
of the hatefulness of enmity, sometimes of the enjoyment that 
springs from the mutual contemplation of opposites ; we cannot 
discern equipoise, symmetry, rigidity of contour, without, as we 
gaze, being stirred by manifold pain and pleasure of secure 
repose, of bondage under fixed laws, or of limitation and con- 
finement. The world becomes alive to us through this power 
to see in forms the joy and sorrow of existence that they hide ; 



FEELING. 217 

and there is no shape so coy that our fancy cannot sympatheti- 
cally enter it." 

How far this is fancy, how far sober reality, we need not stop 
to inquire ; but it is easy to carry the subjective element to 
such an extreme as to underrate or even lose sight of the Infi- 
nite Personality which gives reality to Nature. It has not 
been the design of science, but the indirect result of our better 
knowledge of the mechanism of nature that has had the effect 
of driving out of the hearts of too many people that lively sym- 
pathy which men in the earlier ages of the world manifested 
for her power and beauty. 

" The world is too much with us : late and soon, 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers : 
Little we see in Nature that is ours; 
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! 
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon; 
The winds that will be howling at all hours, 
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; 
For this, for everything, we are out of tune; 
It moves us not. — Great God ! I'd rather be 
A Pagan suckled in a creed out worn : 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; 
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." 

Sight is the most accurate and definite of all the senses, and 
yet the information given us by the eye comes to us through 
more apparently incompatible data than in any other sense. 
In the first place, the image on the retina reverses everything, 
making up down, and right left. This at one time was a 
puzzle, though it has now pretty well passed out of discussion, 
since we have come to reflect that we do not see the image at 
all in consciousness, and would never have known of the inver- 
sion except for the investigations of the physiologists. As we 
have seen, there need be no possible likenesses in the molec- 



2l8 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

ular reactions of the brain-cells to actual objects in nature, and 
if there were, nothing would be explained. 

Again, we have that whole class of what we call illusions in 
perspective, — illusions, however, without which we could really 
see nothing in true relation. But, truth to say, they ought to 
be sufficiently confounding to the Gradgrinds, who insist upon 
' facts, nothing but facts.' Let one look at the setting sun, 
when broken clouds are interposed, and see the streaks of light 
raying out, fan-shaped, sometimes through a whole semi-circum- 
ference. The eye tells us that they are inclined to each other 
in every possible angle, and yet they are really parallel ; and 
so, in one degree or another, it is with the whole range of 
vision. These illusions, everywhere existing unobserved in 
nature, may be made apparent by a little artifice. Lines 
exactly parallel may be easily made to look inclined, or curved, 
by means of auxiliary lines ; and curved lines made to appear 
parallel by the position of the eye. So also straight lines may 
look broken ; angles, larger or smaller than they really are. 

As an illustration of how the judgment may be deceived in 
vision by insignificant means, take this figure. 





The horizontal lines are of equal length, but they do not 
appear so. 

In the four following figures, in which the principal lines in 
each form the same-sized square, the eye pronounces unreliable 
judgments. 

It thus appears that our sensations in vision are immensely 



FEELING. 



219 



composite, and full of aberrancies ; but, doubtless, if it were 
not so, effective vision would be impossible ; and we may be 
thankful that those inflexible souls who would reduce the uni- 



N/\l/ 



AA 



\y\/ 






> 



<■ 






> 



> 

> 
> 
> 
> 



< 
< 

< 

< 



verse to square and plummet are restricted to an exercise of 
their recalcitrant predilections without the power to set the 
world right after their purblind fancy. 



220 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 



CHAPTER XXL 

feeling {continued'). 

Art. Ideal element. Sculpture. Painting. Music. Architecture. 
Poetry. Evolution of ethical feeling. The good. Ethical treatment 
reserved to later stage. 

IN treating of the Imagination we saw that the Art-world is 
primarily indebted to that original and creative power for 
its existence ; but it is scarcely less dependent upon feeling. 
The Imagination is a form of cognition, and as such is cold 
and powerless. All warmth and intensity must come from the 
emotional element of our nature, and thought would have no 
value did it not reach down and quicken the pulsations of the 
heart. If one could, in thought, penetrate and construe every- 
thing, but had no interest in the result, either pleasurable or 
painful, manifestly nothing would have value, and there would 
be no inducement for the self — perhaps no power — to prefer 
one thing to another, or to distinguish itself from aught else : 
indeed, the very hypothesis is shown to be inadmissible by the 
attempt to entertain it. 

It is thus apparent how large a part the emotional nature of 
an artist or a poet must play in any effective work. It is not 
always easy to point out the sentient element which has moved 
the imagination in the production of a particular work, nor 
wherein lurks the subtle effect in the work itself; but it must 
have left its impress behind, or it will not move the heart or fix 
the attention of another. Hence it is that the artist and the 
poet must put their own best emotions in their work, or they 
will fail to move their fellow-men. They must be able to catch 



FEELING. 221 

and fix the subtle power and pathos which are ever appealing 
to us for recognition in the processes of nature, and in human 
conduct, and so help others whose sensibilities are less acute, 
or whose training is deficient, to feel the truth and beauty of 
the world-work spread out before us by the Ineffable Artist. 

It is not that the artist is to simply reproduce the truth, or 
the beauty, which he sees in the material world, or in human 
conduct; for, manifestly, that would help nobody to see or 
feel, that would leave one still to discern for oneself; but the 
artist must present the subject of his work with his own per- 
sonal factor through and through it, if he would give it value. 
This is what is called ' idealizing ' ; this is the part which the 
imagination, the original and creative factor, plays. It is not 
that one is expected to admire, or wonder at the power and 
cleverness of the artist, but to hear or see his work with an 
elevation of heart and soul, looking through the work itself, 
and the artist's treatment, to celestial wonders beyond. Thus 
mere imitation is not Art ; it is the base and counterfeit in Art. 
And yet, the personal element must not be obtruded. It must 
be the { True ' and the ' Beautiful ' that one feels, not the artist ; 
the personal element is in the handling by which one is made 
to feel what would otherwise escape one. There is time and 
opportunity enough to admire the artist, but it is after the 
pleasure his art has called forth has had free scope. 

The artist cannot invent his truth, nor his beauty ; he must 
take them from the ' pattern in the mount,' and so it is that he 
must study the form and movement of the actual ; but his 
material in hand, it is for him to produce new effects, and 
touch the heart by presenting the pleasing and pathetic under 
new conditions, and with personal emphasis. It is herein that 
man shows his superiority over nature ; that is, nature in its 
mechanical aspect. He finds himself no longer bound, but 
begins himself to devise and create. Hence it is that in true 
art there must always be the real and the ideal ; but the real is 



222 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

the work of the bondsman who must do his task ; the ideal is 
the work of the freeman who but uses the drudge to supply 
him with the material by which he bodies forth thoughts before 
unthought, and songs till then unsung. An artist must be a 
realist, but if that be all, his work is only that of a faithful and 
intelligent copyist ; it is as an idealist that the freedom and 
power of genius opens to us the world of unspeakable things. 

It is just for this reason that the sculptor is so restricted in 
his art. He works in all three of the spatial dimensions, and 
so, in space-form, his work must be literally and exactly real. 
Happily for him he cannot carry the realistic element further. 
He cannot produce flesh tints, expressions of the eye, nor any 
of the endless color effects. If he could, he would make mon- 
sters ; we could not endure for long a dead, false thing so 
entirely like a human being or any real animal as to actually 
deceive us. We hate what seems to set itself up for true, and 
is not ; but we only begin to hate it, when it begins to so simu- 
late what is real and we feel ourselves in danger of mistaking 
the false for the true. There is no danger of mistaking the 
Venus of Milo or the Greek Slave for real women, and so we 
greet them with a glow of pure emotion ; but if we, for the 
moment, could not distinguish them from living forms, we 
should turn our eyes away in confusion. It is the non-realistic, 
or preter-realistic factor remaining to the sculptor that makes 
his art possible. 

In painting, the artist has but two dimensions possible to 
him ; and thus he has, in the start, a great advantage over the 
plastic arts in the necessity for the ideal creation of the third 
dimension. It is just by virtue of this restriction — this forced 
exclusion from a fatal realism — that painting gets its compara- 
tive freedom from the trammels which encompass sculpture, and 
finds a world of ideal possibilities opened to it. There is, how- 
ever, an element of realism left it, which is its snare, — the 
power to delineate the texture and tint of the human form, and 



FEELING. 223 

the expressions of human emotion ; and it must be confessed 
that artists have used their power in this regard to the serious 
hurt of their art. But this apart, the high idealism of the 
painter, founded on a true, pure realism, has opened up to us a 
world of transcendental beauty and excellence. 

The poet gains greater freedom still, because he has no 
trammels of space whatever ; and so is released from all possi- 
ble realism of external form and color. His is the ideal world 
indeed ; but he, too, has his snare in a subjective realism 
gathered up in words. By means of these he causes the actual 
world of things and events to pass before the mind and touch 
the heart. He, too, has often faulted by presenting a gross 
and impure realism in seductive guise ; and in so far has 
debased his muse. 

In music the possibility of realism is almost wholly cut off. 
The musician, however much he may try, cannot cause the real 
world of object or action to pass before the mind. In so-called 
descriptive music there is never more than a faint suggestion 
of a real action, and none whatever of objects. The sounds of 
nature are indeed sometimes imitated, in a way, by the com- 
poser; such as the song of birds, the rush and roar of the 
elements, the clank and jar of machinery ; but it is a hazardous 
domain, and if not carefully handled results in the ridiculous 
and vulgar. In the hands of the great composers admirable 
effects are thus produced, but such ventures at imitations are 
always highly idealized, and helped out by suggestions from 
word and action. The ' anvil chorus ' in ' Trovatore ' is a suc- 
cess, but nobody would ever have known what it really meant 
except for its setting ; and so in the ' hailstone chorus ' of the 
' Israel in Egypt ' there is only an appropriateness in the music, 
and in no sense an imitation of the fact in nature ; while in 
such works as the * Pastorale ' the likenesses are purely fanciful. 

Architecture is even more tied down to the real than sculp- 
ture, since the unideal condition of use enters in such large 



224 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

degree ; but it has, on the other hand, a sweep and freedom 
denied the sculptor, in that it need not be imitative, and may 
mount up in power and massiveness to the stupendous and 
sublime. 

There is, then, a right place for realism in art, and there 
could be no art without it ; but it is not the factor which gives 
value to the work of genius, and elevates and refines our man- 
hood. It is the region of determinism, in itself, inflexible and 
expressionless. It is not until the free creative power of per- 
sonality breathes into it the living spirit, that truth and beauty 
spring forth to charm and elevate. It is thus we see how tran- 
scendent the psychical factor of personality is, as compared with 
the stark and rigid facts of mechanical phenomena. 

The five grand divisions of art, as commonly reckoned, — 
Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Poetry, and Music, — fall into 
two distinct groups with respect to space and time : the first 
three being dependent upon space-form, and the last two 
upon time-form. The first group — Architecture, Sculpture, 
and Painting — having definite spatial limitations, are utterly 
immobile and rigid : the second group — Poetry and Music — 
untrammeled by place-restrictions, are free and flowing, — find- 
ing their very life in rhythmic movement and sequence. This 
emancipation from the bondage of localization raises these two 
rhythmic arts far above the space-clogged group ; but poetry is 
entitled to a pre-eminence exclusively its own, in that it compels 
the universal round of feeling to its uses, finding itself equally 
at home in all three of the great domains, rational, esthetic, and 
moral ; while all the others are almost wholly restricted to the 
one esthetic mode. It is not to be denied that the truest work 
of the poetic art is when the esthetic factor is dominant ; but 
there is much high, true poetry founded chiefly in the sense of 
the true, as well as much that has the feeling of holiness and 
purity for its characteristic motive. The graphic and plastic 
arts do unquestionably evoke feelings, both of the true and 



FEELING. 225 

the good ; but such feeling is secondary in character, arising 
through perception which is primarily esthetic. 

Poetry has still another prerogative which sets it apart from 
and above all the other arts ; the catholicity of its content. It 
uses freely, and as of right, the whole round of material wrought 
upon by all the other arts ; with a world of matter still beyond 
exclusively its own. Architecture, it is true, makes use of 
sculpture and painting to a limited extent, and in an auxiliary 
way ; and music borrows the help of poetry at times ; but the 
poetic muse seizes upon, and passes through her alembic, all 
that appeals to human consciousness in nature and in art. She 
claims as her own a share of musical effect in her numbers, — 
revels in the 'long-drawn aisle, and fretted vault,' — not only 
gazes upon the graver's finished work, but listens to the click of 
his chisel, and peers in upon the flood of high emotion which 
fills him with joy, while he compels the marble to show forth 
the image in his soul. To the poet everything is laid bare, the 
conflict of motives, — the sweep and rush of passion, — the 
pathos and joy, hate and despair, sweetness and rest, on earth 
and in the far beyond. The poet is only limited by his own 
soul-power, and his genius of expression. 

We saw that Truth is disclosed to us through the understand- 
ing, and, finding it pleasing, there is built up in us, little by lit- 
tle, an emotional element which gives it value, and so the love 
of it becomes a high, pure power which moves the self when- 
ever any new manifestation is discovered. In like way the 
love of the Beautiful, and of the Good is developed. 

In the beginning we have no knowledge of what is beautiful, 
or what is good ; and so, of course, no feeling for either. We 
have simply the capacity for this, as for any other order of 
knowledge, varying in degree for different persons ; and the 
development proceeds as a reaction to proper stimuli, only 
remembering that in the vital functions which have to do with 
purely sensuous feeling, the response is immediate, whereas, 



226 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

here the understanding must first construe, and then the sensi- 
bilities respond. Thus it is that nature has made us directly 
answerable for the degree and nature of our esthetic and moral 
emotions. If the understanding does not concern itself to dis- 
cover what is beautiful and what is good, there will be no 
response of the heart upon the presentation of either the one 
or the other. There is no one, it is true, so low in the scale of 
being as to be absolutely destitute of a sense of beauty and of 
right ; but there is a wide range in degree, chiefly due to cul- 
tivation. Especially is this true of the beautiful. In moral 
feeling the scale is much narrower, and probably begins lower 
down ; but the general truth is the same. If one has no soul 
for beauty, it is because one has failed to open one's eyes to 
nature, and to study her wondrous ways ; and if one is insensi- 
ble to the charms of art, it is because one has neglected, 
through necessity or inclination, to study the works of genius. 
It is to be noted, however, that the intensity of esthetic feeling, 
with respect to what is really beautiful, is by no means strictly 
in the ratio of the development of the understanding. One 
may feel strongly, what one takes to be beautiful, though it be 
decidedly vulgar when brought to the test of an educated 
standard. We have in such case a powerful native susceptibil- 
ity, but a lack of knowledge, and so a lack of refinement in the 
emotion. The intellect has given the object a false value, and 
the emotive-factor has simply accepted the purported worth. 
The self is then powerful, but not true. That there is an actual 
standard of beauty, notwithstanding the wide range of popular 
differences in appreciation, is shown by the fact, that all who 
set themselves to study the subject — all who have the oppor- 
tunity and inclination to cultivate their taste in nature and art 
— steadily ascend towards an agreement ; and although there 
never is entire accord in the higher plane of culture, the differ- 
ences become more and more minute, with a vast range of 
thorough agreement with respect to the lower end of the scale. 



FEELING. 227 

With regard to the Good, the difference between the lowest 
and highest limits, is far less than in the True or the Beautiful. 
This is, perhaps, because of the far greater sharpness of the 
psychical factor which gives it character. Cognition and sen- 
sation, which respectively characterize rational and esthetic feel- 
ing, spread themselves over the whole psychical area, in a con- 
tinuous and progressive way ; whereas will, never absent, it is 
true, is in its nature decisive and instantaneous. More than 
this, morality, while discoverable only in action, is by no means 
discoverable in all actions, but is confined to such conduct as 
concerns the rights and well-being of our fellow-men, and our 
relations to the All-Father. Thus it is that the area in which 
differences of opinion obtain as to what is moral and what is 
not, is greatly narrowed ; but, perhaps, on the other hand, it is 
just because of this comparative defmiteness that its universality 
and depth are increased. As a matter of fact, there are no 
races of men, and no individuals among men, in possession of 
ordinary psychical activities, without a fairly definite standard of 
morality, and some corresponding development of ethical sen- 
sibility. Men everywhere, and in all time, have the notion 
expressed by the word ' ought,' in which a necessary idea of 
obligation is imbedded. It is the feeling lying behind it, which 
gives value to the particular action towards which the ' ought ' 
points ; and it is just in the right development of such feeling 
that man's nature reaches its supreme excellence. Furthermore, 
it is in this one psychical mode alone — the volitive — which 
gives character to moral feeling, that man in any right sense 
has the slightest possible power. It is only by means of this 
self-determining factor that the apparently independent action 
in sensation and cognition discovers itself; they being, as such, 
absolutely bound. And so it appears, that this highest possible 
excellence and worth to which man can attain, is exactly that 
which depends primarily on consciously directed self-activity ; 



228 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

that is to say, what he feels he ought to do is just what he is 
free, beyond all else, actually to do. 

In the nature of the case, the self must be called upon to 
recognize the fact of beauty in the world, and cannot well help 
building up an esthetic power in the personality ; and so also 
with rational feeling : and while it feels, in cultivating a higher 
and truer esthetic and rational feeling, that it is, in so far, 
elevated and refined, it does not feel it to be a duty, such as 
brings with the neglect a criminal condemnation, even though 
it wholly fail to strive for such elevation of nature ; whereas, in 
moral action, a factor entirely peculiar to it must be recognized, 
which assumes to command absolutely, ' Thou shalt ' or ' Thou 
shalt not' (the ' Categorical Imperative' of Kant), whenever 
an act involving right or wrong is in issue. This is undoubtedly 
the reaction of the moral feeling, giving especial value to moral 
action ; but why should there be this altogether peculiar factor 
acting with an authority which we have no consciousness of 
having committed to it, but which we do not in the least ques- 
tion ? The only answer which seems to meet the case fairly is, 
that it comes from the same source whence we are given con- 
sciousness, memory, and imagination ; and as they are clearly 
for an end, this must be also ; that end being plainly to impel 
men to recognize and pursue the paramount end of conscious 
personality. 



THE WILL. 229 



CHAPTER XXII. 



THE WILL. 



Elementary effort. Emerges in conscious volition. Much that is com- 
monly accounted free, mechanical. Liberty restricted to purposive epoch. 
Inhibitory functions. The office of the will in developing emotional 
nature. Development of volitional powers. Moral aspect of the will. 
Penitence. 

FROM the beginning of our inquiry we have been compelled 
to assume a mode of the personality which makes self- 
movement possible. The discovery of meaning would never, of 
itself, be more than a dry, cold, impassive fact. It could have 
no value, and no end, so long as it remained pure meaning, if 
that were possible. To pure feeling, assuming such a thing 
possible, we should have to concede value, it is true ; but how- 
ever intense it might be, there is no power of conceiving it as 
doing anything as such. The discovery of meaning makes 
plain how or why a certain course of action would have a cer- 
tain result ; and feeling makes such possible result desirable ; 
but neither of these are more than modes of the self, and we 
cannot conceive of a mode in itself, doing anything whatever. 
The ability, the power, the instrument by which the subject 
enjoys a capability, is still but an instrument, and cannot act 
of itself to make or unmake anything ; the subject must put the 
capacity to its use. The subject which enjoys the capacity for 
the discovery of meaning, and of being affected by the action 
of stimuli, i.e. of knowing and feeling, is the self; but the mind 
does not construe, and the feeling does not feel : the self con- 
strues through the mental powers, and feels through the sensi- 



230 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

bilities. But now, though the self did understand, and did feel, 
the results would but be its states, and would stand apart for- 
ever, if the capacities of the self ended with these. We may 
conceive of the self as knowing the feeling and in some way, 
perhaps, feeling the knowledge ; but, unless we grant a further 
capability, there could be no other result than that the self 
should simply go on knowing and feeling. Hence the absolute 
demand, if we are to have self-action at all, for a power to gov- 
ern and control the vasco-motor system ; and such power we 
indisputably know in consciousness, and have been all along 
compelled to recognize. This is the conative mode of the self. 
Its characteristic is energy ; its office is to compel the actual 
to emerge from the possible ; and its end, self-development. 
In this mode of the self we have an intuitive apprehension of 
causation, — of one thing compelling another. Through it is 
opened up to us the whole domain of the ' Becoming,' and the 
psychical-nexus between the actual and possible, as a simple 
fact, is discovered to us. All self-ordered change — every 
self-determined and self-enforced modification of the person- 
ality — is accomplished through its instrumentality. By cogni- 
tion we are made conscious of what is ; by sensation, how we 
are affected by the existent ; and by conation, we fit ourselves 
to the discovered conditions. 

As we have said, in this ordering of self to meet new condi- 
tions, and the consciousness of a compulsory nexus in the pro- 
cess of such adaptation, we have an intuition of cause. In the 
consciousness of effort throughout the process, we have an 
intuition of power or energy. The projection of these notions 
into all cosmical order, gives rise to these concepts as univer- 
sally necessary in the mechanism of nature ; and thus it must 
be conceded that both cause and energy, as manifested in the 
cosmos, have their ground in personality. 

But as sensation in its basic sense is not yet entitled to be 
called feeling, and cognition in its elementary form is only an 



THE WILL. 231 

adumbration of specific thought, so conation, in its most general 
sense, is not will. All three of these fundamental self-modes 
are active long before the self is illuminated by the light of 
consciousness ; that is, all along through the primitive sub-con- 
scious period : and in their elementary forms they continue to 
exert their activities even in the highest stages of self-directed 
life*. Feeling gains its title when the self enters upon the con- 
scious use of the sensibilities ; and thought claims recognition 
when the self uses the cognitive power to think ; and so in like 
way, will is finally differentiated, and entitled to its name, only 
when it consciously enters upon the use of, and actively em- 
ploys, the conative, — the energizing, causative mode of the 
personality. 

This, rightly understood, clears the way of much popular 
error concerning the will. The far greater part of our actions 
are not volitive. The conative mode of the self has its auto- 
matic element as much as the other two modes. Indeed, as 
we have seen from the beginning, any automatic action carries 
with it all three of these as factors. If the question presents 
itself as to whether I shall remain where I now am, or walk 
into the next room, I feel that I am at liberty to will to do it 
or not ; but from the moment I determine to do it, the move- 
ment which results will be almost wholly automatic. It is not 
at all that I am free to go to the other room or not ; but 
whether I am free to will to go or not. From the instant the 
determination is arrived at, the movement, while du,e to the 
conative mode of the self, is purely mechanical ; except in so 
far as any new determination may enter it. The mandate of the 
will no more raises my arm than the ' heave ' of a boatswain 
raises an anchor. This self-determining activity is the Will. 

All bodily movements in any wise dependent upon volition, 
and now become automatic, were in their inception voli- 
tive, — the will, so to speak, standing by to issue command 
after command, until the mechanism was taught to do its work, 



232 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

and the will freed for higher duties. It must not be under- 
stood, of course, that the whole work was, or even can be, voli- 
tive purely. Nothing whatever could have been accomplished 
under such a condition. The will is, if we may so express it, 
the trigger of the conative mode, obedient to the finger-touch 
of the self, and its proper functions begin and end with such 
touch ; but its effect is to set free, or check, the energizing 
mechanism of the conative mode in certain specific directions. 
Without this mechanical factor, gratuitously furnished in the 
beginning in an inchoate form, no possible work could be 
accomplished. 

But it must also be carefully borne in mind that the person- 
ality is not originally dependent upon the volitive activities. 
All that vital mechanism, unknown to and out of the reach of 
the conscious self, must be pre-supposed ; and though silent 
and unthought upon, it never for a moment ceases to make 
possible the higher stages of personal development. 

Now, among these vital functions, and long antedating any- 
thing like clearly construed purposive control, we must recog- 
nize a world of appetites, desires, impulses, and propulsions, 
which push us on into life, and continue to sustain us in it. 
In and through this whole domain we must recognize the in- 
choate volitive mode. It is impossible to fix upon the epoch 
at which purposive action begins, and so impossible to date the 
accession of the will to the enjoyment of its specific preroga- 
tives ; tut it reaches far down into the depths of propulsive 
development. Until the will really enters upon its purposive 
functions, self-development can hardly be said to begin. All 
that has gone on previous to that epoch, in its purely purposive 
aspect, must be credited to the same power which brought into 
being, and still sustains the vital organism itself. 

These sensuous impulses still continue in the full light of 
consciousness, and unless inhibited throw into movement the 
muscular mechanism. The self soon learns that these blind 



THE WILL. 233 

impulsions often result in distress and loss ; and that it is 
vested, within limits, with the necessary inhibitory mechanism 
to modify, direct, and control these organic and propulsive 
movements. The function of volition is to throw into action 
the inhibitory mechanism ; and, just so long as this restrain- 
ing or detached state continues, the impulsive movement is 
checked or defeated. The impulse cannot disregard or over- 
ride the annulling or impeding mechanism so long as the self 
does not, so to speak, touch the lever to throw out of gear this 
inhibitory machinery. The prerogative of the will is, in this 
regard, supreme, provided of course that the impulse is one 
fully amenable to volition. There are many, as repeatedly said, 
not so answerable ; and these will go on to produce move- 
ment; but the self is provided with indirect means of con- 
trolling even those, as, for example, by flight, in the case of 
most solicitations. Some, as a desire for food, being vitally 
necessary, never yield at all. 

The first work of the will, then, is to restrain, direct, and 
refine the original impulsions of the vital organism, — a work 
never fully accomplished, but continuing to the end of life. 
The strength of these impulsions, in the beginning, is due to 
the organism as inherited ; but by use, abuse, or suppression 
through volition, they are constantly modified. An original 
impulse is blind, — an instinct; but after a time, its end is 
comprehended, and approved or disapproved, given value, and 
it becomes properly a desire or aversion. It is the cognitive 
factor which lifts it out of the list of impulses, and places 
it in the category of desire. It has now become a trained ser- 
vitor, to be intelligently used in the higher work of the person- 
ality ; or, if neglected, a refractory and heady dependent, often 
riotous and troublesome. This work of developing the ener- 
gies of the organism is the immediate result of self-determina- 
tion through the proper use of volition. The lever, by which 
certain sets of energies are thrown in or out of action, is the 



234 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

will in the hand of the self; and in the ratio of the decision 
and firmness in its use, the results will be excellent. 

So far, we have been speaking of the action of the will in 
regard to sensuous impulsions. These, as we have seen under 
the head of Feeling, are esoteric in their origin : we now go 
on to consider that exoteric class belonging to the higher stage 
of development called Rational, Esthetic, and Moral Truths, 

The process here is just the reverse of that we have been 
considering. In sensuous feeling, impulses blindly propel, and 
the sensations are themselves immediate objects of cognition ; 
they must acquire an intellectual factor before these can be sub- 
ject to volition, and then the action is directory or repressive. 
But material of thought coming from without, does not present 
itself to consciousness in its sensuous aspect, but as an intellec- 
tion. There is thus primarily nothing to restrain, because there 
is nothing propulsive. It is not until after the meaning dis- 
closed is transferred to feeling, and given value, that emotion 
discovers itself, and government becomes necessary. But pass- 
ing the conative activity necessary in order to make perception 
clear and definite, there is very definite and positive work for 
the will to do in directing and holding the organism upon the 
subject to be studied, either in a rational, esthetic, or moral 
aspect ; though of course the case will differ through many 
degrees for different organisms. In this higher stage, the 
instrumentality is the same ; but the work of the will becomes 
essentially positive. It is no longer inhibitory and regulative, 
but impelling and upbuilding. Little by little, the meaning of 
things disclosed to the understanding as true, or beautiful, or 
good, is, by the active agency of the will, transferred to the 
emotive mode ; and thus if the work is well done, there are 
built up, on the mechanical side, new and high desires, — the 
whole emotive nature becoming refined, enlarged, and purified. 

Now the self, from the aspect of its manifoldness, is the scene 
of constant strife, — impulses conflict, desires conflict, — and 



THE WILL. 235 

one is torn by contending factions. Order can only be main- 
tained by the dominating agency of the will ; and, under 
ordinary circumstances, peace obtains ; but sometimes, under 
unexpected and trying circumstances, the will is vacillating 
and unsteady, and the whole self in a state of confusion and 
uncertainty. Few persons but at times suffer such a stampede ; 
but some are so habitually changeable and unsteady that they 
have no confidence in themselves, and cannot be depended on 
by others. This is because they are constantly throwing the 
conative organism in and out of gear ; or, in consequence of a 
confusion of the understanding, are in perplexity as to what 
connection should be established and maintained. Thus the 
understanding is ever presenting different courses as possible 
and promising, and feeling is clamoring for the gratification 
which lies in certain directions, while prudence gives warning 
of the danger or loss which impends : the self must decide — 
must choose between the two or more possible courses of 
action : and the will is the instrument of the choice. 

As a simple fact of consciousness, the self experiences no 
possible compulsion upon it to choose any one out of the many 
courses of action presented ; and it is in this fact, and only at 
this point, that freedom can be predicated. Determinism is 
also a fact known only primarily in consciousness, and abso- 
lutely necessary to the notion of freedom ; but determinism is 
felt to be in the mechanism alone, and after the will has acted. 
If the organism were not compelled to body forth the fiats of 
the will, it would be inconceivable that any effects should follow 
a cause ; and so, that any such phenomenon as volition could 
ever be. Thus we arrive once more at what we have had 
abundant reason to see before, the personal and conscious 
origin of cause, and the dependent uniformity and inflexibility 
of mechanism. 

The self must ever be at its post, so to speak, to give direc- 
tion to the mechanism, much as a driver must make his touch 



236 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

on the reins felt, though hardly conscious at most times of the 
effort. In the far larger round of routine life, desires run so 
evenly with the purposive trend of the self, that the mechanism 
seems to act of itself, — and, indeed, it is the objective self 
acting ; for those settled desires with respect to business, 
society, study, and whatever else that gives tone and intensity 
to our daily walk, have all been built up by innumerable con- 
scious efforts of the will in the past ; and now, by their stored- 
up energy, are carrying the personality forward, through these 
self-developed powers. But there is always considerably more 
of the original and self-directing factor, even in our routine life, 
than appears ; much as with the driver, though he appear to 
exercise so little control over his horses, if he were to let go 
the reins for a moment, the results would ordinarily show a 
marked difference in consequence. 

The functions of the will are scarcely less important in the 
work of moulding and cultivating the intellect. It is the prov- 
ince of the understanding to disclose the order and bearing of 
things and events, and this it does according to its excellence 
at any particular moment ; but it is a psychical mechanism, and 
as such is not only susceptible of large variation in accuracy 
and power, at every stage, but needs to be developed from the 
beginning. The office of the will in fixing and directing atten- 
tion from the beginning of the thought-process is of the highest 
moment ; and without it there could never be anything more 
than a chaotic thought-mechanism. Assuming a fair develop- 
ment of intellectual power to have been already accomplished, 
so long as our thinking proceeds along accustomed lines, and 
on accustomed subjects, the will has little more to do than it 
has in its ordinary government of the vasco-motor system ; but 
whenever an intellectual difficulty arises, or where the subject 
does not call into activity the stored-up energy of ready-formed 
desires, the self is compelled to hold the mind hard upon the 
point in hand, and stoutly refuse to yield to the weariness or 



THE WILL. 237 

indifference which is sure to ensue. If the self keeps the 
intellect steadily applied, as a rule, difficulties begin to yield, 
and indifference gives way. There are undoubtedly great dif- 
ferences in the native powers of the intellect ; but the high 
things accomplished in the thought-world are far more due to 
the persistence with which the self uses its intellectual capabil- 
ities than to their original vigor. Sir Isaac Newton used to 
declare that he succeeded in his work, not by any extraordi- 
nary sagacity, but solely by patient and persistent thought :« 
" He kept the subject of consideration constantly before him, 
and waited till the first dawning opened gradually into a full 
and clear light, never quitting, if possible, the mental process 
until the object of it were wholly gained." 

We may be permitted to doubt, in his case, that this was all ; 
but the result of this process, if not carried to such an extreme 
as to work injury in other respects, is not only that the subject 
of thought becomes luminous, but an intellectual momentum is 
stored up in the thought- mechanism itself, which enables it to 
do easily what is, at first, wearisome and difficult. This is the 
true work of the student, that is to say, of one whose object is 
the development of his intellectual capabilities for subsequent 
work in special lines of investigation, or for the general work of 
life. The materials of thought — the actual information and 
learning gathered by the way — are necessary to the process; 
but, after all, cannot be compared for value with the acquire- 
ment of mobility, accuracy, and intensity in the thought-mech- 
anism itself. If, on the other hand, the self fail to use this 
marvellous will-power in a true process of intellectual evolution, 
difficulties gather rapidly from the very neglect or misuse, 
which finally defeat better efforts made too late. Rust, ob- 
structive accretions, and undertows of habit, clog and impede 
any serious effort of the self to direct the current of thought 
from old channels, and to hold it long enough in the new 
direction to wear its way along higher lines. 



238 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

But not only has the self this power of refining and strength- 
ening the intellectual mechanism through the right use of the 
will, but it has the power also of developing and strengthening 
the will itself. The process is this : the understanding makes 
one conscious that one is too soft and yielding to the pressure 
of desires, to solicitations from companions, and to difficulties 
in the way of study ; the feeling gives value to the disclosures 
of the intellect, and one resolves (an act of will) to be more 
•firm in future. A new occasion presenting itself, one is but 
partially successful, but renews the purpose ; a little better 
success the next time, and so on to decided success. If one 
knows oneself to be vacillating and unsteady in affairs, one 
can practise decision in small matters, and firmness in adher- 
ing to determinations, though at some cost or annoyance, and 
if honestly conducted, the will can be trained as certainly as 
the intellect and feeling. Self-discipline, in all the modes of 
the self, is of the utmost importance ; and it seems a pity that 
young people do not understand better the psychological prin- 
ciples underlying it. 

A man's acquisitions in this world fall into two great and 
vastly different classes, — those which come to be his sub- 
jectively and organically, and those which come to be his 
objectively and artificially. Thus the strength of muscle, the 
sagacity of mind, the decision and honesty of character, all 
belong to the personality, as organically real and living factors, 
— they are the self manifested. All acquisitions of this class 
can be gained only by the co-operation of the self, through the 
will. 

The acquisitions belonging to the second class are those 
which come to one from without, and have no vital and 
organic ligament connecting them with the personality. They 
are such as wealth, station, honors, friends, and whatever else 
one may claim, in a proprietary sense, of the eternal world. 
These may be bestowed, purchased, seized ; but the nexus 



THE WILL. 239 

between them and the self is never more than a fiction, and 
they may be totally lost at any moment. The difference be- 
tween the two classes is like that between fruit actually growing 
upon a tree, and the tied-on fruit one sees at Christmastide for 
the children. Now, this real and true fruit of mind and heart 
and will can be had in no way but by and through self- effort ; 
and the supreme, and dominating factor, through it all, is the 
will. No money, nor influence, nor favor ever yet gave one 
the power to read or write, to play upon an instrument, or 
solve a problem in mathematics. Money and favor can, in- 
deed, supply the opportunities ; but no muscle will ever do its 
office, no brain-cell will ever exercise its cunning, except by 
the will of the one only person who shall be able to actually 
enjoy the gain. And so, in all those higher reaches of self- 
development. The only real value of all that second class, 
for the poor, artificial possession of which there is so much 
zeal and strife in the world, lies in its bearing upon, and use 
towards the acquisition of the true possessions which come to 
us through the self-developing realities of the subjective class. 

The most important relation of the will to human destiny 
still remains to be mentioned. It is its moral aspect. All 
philosophers are agreed that there is an important difference 
between conduct which we call prudent, agreeable, or sagacious, 
and conduct which is morally good. The difference practi- 
cally between an action which involves the question of right 
and wrong, and one which is simply prudent or foolish, is 
understood by everybody, and needs little explanation from 
the every-day point of view. Theoretically it is an ethical 
question, and I shall defer this aspect for consideration at a 
later stage of our inquiry. Here we confine our treatment of 
it to a brief look at its psychological bearing. 

Obviously the will is an essential factor of all questions of 
conduct, either prudent or moral. But in every act, we may 
distinguish three stages ; the conscious promptings of the 



24O MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

emotional nature under the disclosures of the intellect, the 
purposive self-determination, and the results which follow this 
purposive epoch. Of these, there is no liberty in either the 
first or the last. The emotional nature must make itself known 
in consciousness for just what it is under the existing state 
of the case ; and after the self has culminated in a volitive fiat, 
the vasco-motor mechanism must execute the mandate with 
the same absolute necessity as one cog-wheel compels the 
movement of another. It is inconceivable, therefore, that the 
self should hold itself accountable for the solicitations which 
assail it under an existing environment, though conscious of 
the fact that it has had much to do with building up, in the 
past, what are now facts of its own nature. So also, after 
the purposive epoch, the results, falling under the law of 
determinism in nature, no sense of accountability in them, as 
such, can be recognized by the self. But consciousness has 
quite another voice with respect to the purposive epoch. 
However strongly the self may know itself to be impelled to a 
particular volition, consciousness is clear that the decision 
rests with the self alone ; and a corresponding sense of ac- 
countability is recognized. It is therefore the purpose alone 
which can give self accountability to an action. If the purpose 
be good, the act is good ; if consciousness recognizes the pur- 
pose to be bad, the act is bad. We do not now inquire what 
the ground for this recognition of moral quality in purpose is : 
we here confine ourselves to the bare fact that there is such 
recognition. As to whether the purpose with which the will 
acts is or is not good, the self is the supreme and only judge ; 
and it, and it alone, can know whether, in the light of the 
understanding at the moment, any particular purpose has 
this moral quality or not. 

In many, indeed most, actions this moral quality does not 
appear at all, and the reason of this fact will appear when we 
come to this inquiry. Such actions fall under the general head 



THE WILL. 241 

of prudence, taking the word in its largest sense. Such actions 
may be either those which are intended to promote general well- 
being, by the accumulation of power in the shape of wealth, or 
education, for future use ; or those which give immediate pleas- 
ure, and have no further end. The success or failure of one's 
purpose to accomplish the object, with all dependent conse- 
quences, will determine whether the particular act is wise or 
not. Thus it is that a prudent, or an imprudent, action de- 
pends upon what happens after the purposive epoch ; and this 
fact broadly marks a distinction from all moral action : — pru- 
dence being justified by the mechanical results after the act of 
volition ; morality, by the quality of the purpose itself. Bad 
results make known the unwisdom of the acts, and one may be 
sorry that one did not act differently : a good act may also re- 
sult unfortunately, but one cannot feel guilty, however much he 
may deplore the event, or where, under a mistake, he had not 
understood the case better. Once assured of the right pur- 
pose of an act, in any state of case, one cannot be sorry he 
had not acted differently, unless he regret that he was true to 
his own consciousness of right. There can never be penitence, 
unless there is a clear conviction that the act had a guilty pur- 
pose, however much one may bewail the result. Here we leave 
the question for the present. 



242 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

UNITY OF PERSONALITY. 

Difficulties of question. Unity and manifoldness. Unity a primordial 
condition. Inferior organisms. Protozoa. Not two worlds, one spiritual 
and the other physical. Man a manifestation of one person in two hypos- 
tases. The psychical and mechanical inseparable. Gross and sublimated 
matter. Visible and invisible universe. The ' Unseen Universe ' quoted. 
The mechanical mode has its title to reality only through Personality. The 
cicada. 

ONE has no difficulty in understanding the Unity of Per- 
sonality, so long as one is content to know it for and 
in oneself; nor is there any difficulty in recognizing it in 
another. But in attempting to say, explicitly, just what it is 
that one means by this unity, a serious trouble starts up, and 
continues to confront us. This will not be a surprise, however, 
if we keep in mind what has been so constantly insisted upon 
in these pages, namely, that the ultimate is known, not by the 
construing power, but by the power that underlies all relations, 
— the power through which we derive all rational intuitions, 
and which is rather pure feeling than articulate thought. The 
understanding, concerning itself with the differentia of con- 
cepts, pronouncing upon the likeness and difference among 
the divers marks of an object of thought, has no difficulty in 
dealing with personality so long as it is permitted to seize upon 
and emphasize its modes, states, and conditions. These all, 
as elements of the empirical ego, take their place in the self's 
world, — the sole and only world that is, or can be, known to 
any one of us : — but when all marks are denied it, the con- 
struing power — the power which demands subject and predi- 



UNITY OF PERSONALITY. 243 

cate, and pronounces upon their congruence or incongruence 

— has no field in which to exercise its functions ; so that, in 
the sphere of the understanding, this aspect of ' knowing ' is 
impossible. The self acting, the self suffering, the self in exhi- 
bition of any phenomenon, presents material for cognitive 
scrutiny, and the understanding is at home in the execution of 
its office. But it is obvious that the necessary conditions of all 
such activities is plurality ; and, therefore, whatever the under- 
standing can discover of the self must carry with it this under- 
lying condition of manifoldness. For this reason, it is hopeless, 
and the effort involves contradiction, to look for the unity of 
the self in any deliverance of the understanding. 

And yet every such deliverance implies that very unity which 
it is incompetent to construe. In any judgment touching two 
concepts, A and B, the full statement undoubtedly is, I see, — 
I declare, — I know A to be like or unlike B. In any sense- 
perception, the discovery of order and arrangement, of beauty 
and power, the consciousness rendered explicit is, I see, I 
discover, I feel. The self, thus, is always presupposed as 
the centre of the in-and-out-go of whatever affects it, or is 
affected by it. This is so obvious, in. view of what has been 
said already, that it needs no further amplification here. We 
are simply back once more to the domain of the Pure Reason, 

— the source and ground of all knowing. To be explicit, 
the point is this : — the understanding tells us plainly that 
we cannot understand the unity of the self, nor the unity 
of anything whatever, apart from its plurality ; but ' to under- 
stand,' it must be borne in mind, is to be taken in its technical 
sense ; and by no means as synonymous with ' to know.' We 
do know, and must know, the self in its unity as a primordial 
condition of all other knowing of whatever kind soever. 

This brings the fundamental truth, and key-note of this work, 
once more clearly before us : — the co-existence of the ' one 
and the many.' The title of the book is but another way of 



244 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

phrasing this mystery of the ages. Personality as the subject 
knowing, feeling, acting, is essentially One ; the modes of the 
personality as known in cognition, feeling, and volition, are 
essentially manifold. The knowing instrumentality, the feeling 
instrumentality, the acting instrumentality, are, in their sever- 
alty, mechanisms ; and each in itself is a plurality. The self, 
as subject, has a proprietary right to its modes, and they must 
look to it for their reality ; and so the entire mechanism, in its 
physical and psychical aspects, belongs to the personality in its 
unity. We say ' my thought,' ' my feeling,' ' my will ' ; and we 
never for a moment mistake any one of them, or all of them 
together, for the self. They are the manifestations of the self, 
as much to the self as to others. Thus, while they are not non- 
self, they can have no possible title to be at all, except in and 
of the self; and so cannot be thought of as separate, or separa- 
ble from the self. Neither, on the other hand, can the self be 
thought of as separate, and apart from its modes, — those now 
known in consciousness, or others which may replace them. 
This, as the metaphysical problem of substance and quality, we 
shall have to speak of further on. 

All this applies to the whole bodily organism. The body is 
not the self, but it is its physical manifestation, absolutely nec- 
essary to it ; and so, inseparable from it. But when we speak 
of the body, we do not mean an individuality incapable of 
numerical distinction and separation, but we mean a plurality 
made up of divers parts, all undergoing constant change. The 
body is not the same in its physical composition at any two 
consecutive moments. The body, necessary to any thought of 
the self, is thus not an identity, — not this now-existing body 
as it is in every particular, — but a body is necessary, in which 
the modes of the self shall continuously find their mechanical 
basis. Thus the body may lose a limb, any amount of tissue, 
even large masses of the brain ; but consciousness does not 
tell us that the self suffers mutilation, or is less itself than before. 



UNITY OF PERSONALITY. 245 

This is because the body is, in its very nature, a plurality, made 
up of parts and susceptible of objective increase and diminu- 
tion. 

We have in this fact a notable distinction between body, as 
such, and the personality in its bodily manifestations. When a 
mere body, or thing, is increased, diminished, or divided, our 
thought is that it is increased, diminished, or divided ; but we 
never think, and cannot think, that the personality suffers accre- 
tions, subtractions, or dismemberment by any possible process 
which may be performed upon it physically or psychically. We 
do indeed think of it as changeable and changing ; but never in 
such wise as to discredit, or in any possible way touch its 
unity. 

Undoubtedly ' thing ' may claim a sort of unity. It is ' one ' 
thing, and of this it cannot be defeated ; but it is a unity that 
at once becomes two upon division ; whereas, we cannot form 
the least conception of what could be meant by the half, or any 
fractional part of self. This is true also of anything having 
sub-human personality, as a brute ; or of whatever has an 
animate existence at all, as a vegetable. We are compelled to 
recognize a vital oneness which is not susceptible of fraction. 

Science, it is true, acquaints us with innumerable examples 
of organisms in which it cannot be denied that there is a one- 
ness of vital structure, and yet, upon a section being made, the 
dismembered part readily acquires an independent organic exist- 
ence possessing all the characteristics of the parent organism. 
" The severed parts of the mutilated polype become wholes by 
growing into perfect animal forms, in each of which is fully 
evolved the sum of psychic capacities that belong to the origi- 
nal uninjured creature." Morphologists are agreed that the 
protozoa exhibit endless examples of composite life, — states 
of existence in which a paramount individuality is exhibited, 
and yet which are composed of innumerable sub-individual- 
ities ; even rising through several orders of integration, and 



246 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

composing individualities of greater and greater complexity ; 
as in the sponges and the hydra. In many animal and vege- 
table species, propagation is accomplished by the spontaneous 
severance of portions of the parent body \ such portions devel- 
oping into the perfect organism of the species. Substantially 
the same phenomenon shows itself even in human generation. 

Obviously it is impossible for either naturalist or psychol- 
ogist ever to know more of the nature of this unity in complex- 
ity than appears in its extrinsic phenomena ; and it is safe to 
assume that there will always remain a wide domain of conjec- 
ture in any attempt to explain the organic nexus. It appears 
plain, however, that when an artificial severance is made in such 
an individualized community, it is not a matter of complete in- 
difference where the section shall take place (so long, at least, 
as we can, for minuteness, distinguish the sub-units), but that, 
for the new community life, or an isolated individual develop- 
ment, the severed part must carry with it a complete germinal 
unit of the being to be developed. If there be, indeed, a true 
unity of the first, or any other order in such personae, the 
several sub-personalities but constitute the mechanism of the 
paramount individuality, and a section would not cut in two 
the personality of (say) the polype, but simply cut the corpo- 
real bond which holds one part of its vitalized body to another ; 
giving to the severed portion the opportunity to enter upon 
an independent existence, and develop a more perfect organism 
than it could before enjoy. In point of fact, except that we 
do not see the development of independent creatures, the 
same thing takes place upon the separation of a portion of 
living tissue from any one of the higher animals, man included. 
Physiology does not permit us to doubt that our bodies are 
aggregations of an infinite number of protoplasmic units ; so 
that, in reality, the morphological facts of the protozoic and 
polyzoic worlds present no greater difficulties on this point 
than are found in the human organism. We but find our- 



UNITY OF PERSONALITY. 247 

selves struggling with dissonances which, without yielding up 
their antagonism, are welded into a broader and deeper har- 
mony ; or with individual motions, as of the earth, free and in- 
dependent in their several spheres, composed of all velocities 
in all directions, swallowed up and lost in the larger sweep of 
her paramount orbital individuality. 

But, whatsoever the external world reveals to us, we must 
ever remind ourselves that it can never acquire any better 
warrant for its reality than is given in consciousness ; and to 
this at last we must fall back — as from it, at first, we were 
compelled to set out — in any discussion of the unity of per- 
sonality. But here some caution is needed. It is not because 
we appear to ourselves in consciousness to be one, that we 
get our guarantee that we are actually one ; for, manifestly, 
many things appear, and persistently appear, to us which we 
know to be semblances ; but, as Lotze says : " Our belief in 
our personal unity rests not on our appearing to ourselves such 
a unity, but on our being able to appear to ourselves at all. 
Did we appear to ourselves something quite different, nay, 
did we seem to ourselves to be an unconnected plurality, we 
would from this very fact, from the bare possibility of appear- 
ing anything to ourselves, deduce the necessary unit of our 
being, this time in open contradiction with what self-observa- 
tion sets before us as our own image. What a being appears 
to itself to be is not the important point; if it can appear 
anyhow to itself, or other thing to it, it must be capable of 
unifying manifold phenomena in an absolute individuality of its 
nature." 

Insisting, then, upon the unity of the human personality 
discovered to us as a primordial intuition, and supported at 
all points by the necessities of thought, we are compelled to 
recognize the self as that in which and for which all its modes 
are entitled to reality, in any ultimate sense. It is thus itself 
the primordial reality, and is not to be thought of as an 



248 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

abstraction, a somewhat vague and shadowy, which may be set 
loose from its modes, and still exist destitute of quality or rela- 
tion, out of space- and time-forms, as, indeed, pure and simple 
existence, which is pure and simple nothing. Some such vague 
notion has been, and still is, the popular teaching on this 
point, — the legitimate and necessary outcome of that dualistic 
theory, reaching, in modern times, back to Descartes, in which 
mind and matter are held to have no possible touch, or point 
in common, — to belong indeed to two substantially different 
worlds. 

In our view, there are not two worlds, one psychical and the 
other physical, but one world of which these are the two 
modes ; both real, but with a common ground deeper than 
themselves, the Ultimate and Infinite ' One,' — the Self- Lim- 
ited, Self-Existent Personality. 

This carries our thought back to the analogy presented in 
the lower forms of life, in which we see paramount individu- 
alities gathering up into unity the manifold sub-personalities 
of their organisms. 

Man, the microcosm, is one self, manifested and realized in 
his two hypostases, one a physical mechanism, and the other a 
psychical instrumentality. He is thus not a mere physical being, 
nor a mere psychical being ; but a physio-psychical being, — a 
person, gathering up into himself the innumerable limited self- 
activities of his bodily organism, himself a limited self and a 
self- limiting reality. 

According to our view, it is a mistake to hold that the soul, 
or mind, or spirit (whichever one of these may be preferred 
as the name of the psychical mode of personality) can possess 
an independent and separate existence, any more than the 
physical mechanism could possess a unity apart from the self. 
The empirical self implies, and absolutely demands, the psy- 
chical factor ; and this would be lost by the destruction of the 
physical basis ; and so, also, any activity or energy of the self 



UNITY OF PERSONALITY. 249 

demands that it shall have modes by which psychical differentia- 
tions shall take place, and these modes cannot, therefore, be 
detached from the self, nor the self from them. 

Unless, then, we mean by ' soul,' or any other like word, to 
embrace the entire personality in its essential physical and psy- 
chical oneness, it is misleading and inadmissible ; such words 
can be used in any other sense to designate, not the self, but 
some mere mode thereof. We say ' my soul,' ' my mind,' ' my 
spirit,' etc. In this sense, the use is correct and clear enough ; 
but any meaning which implies a possible diremption of the 
personality is erroneous and unjustifiable. 

But, it will be asked, if both the substantial and mental 
modes are absolutely necessary to the integrity of the self, 
what becomes of personality at death? The question is perti- 
nent and demands an answer, though it might be better in 
some respects to defer it until after we have seen what light 
advanced science is able to throw on the subject of the essen- 
tial nature of matter. It is necessary to so far anticipate the 
results of the discussion of that subject as to say that our ordi- 
nary conception of gross matter, as a somewhat hard, impene- 
trable, or visible, is the result of an invincible prejudice. We 
shall see that there are many forms of substance which offer no 
sensible resistance, are not visible, nor in any wise discoverable 
to our present senses ; some, familiarly known to us, as, for 
example, water, which are solid, liquid, or gaseous under differ- 
ent conditions; while with that inter-stellar ether which per- 
vades all space there is no semblance of sensible qualities left, 
not to speak of the possible ' perfect fluid ' of the advanced 
physicists. There is then nothing in physical science against, 
and much that absolutely demands, the hypothesis that all mat- 
ter in its ultimate analysis is super-sensible and invisible ; so 
that we are not only permitted, but required, to hold that the 
gross matter of our bodies is but one out of any number of pos- 
sible forms which it may assume under different circumstances. 



250 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

The authors of the " Unseen Universe," themselves leaders of 
scientific thought, say they are led to conclude that " the visi- 
ble system is not the whole universe, but only, it may be, a 
very small part of it ; and that there must be an invisible order 
of things which will remain and possess energy when the pres- 
ent system has passed away. Furthermore, we have seen that 
an argument derived from the beginning, rather than the end 
of things, assures us that the invisible universe existed before 
the visible one. From this we conclude that the invisible uni- 
verse exists now, and this conclusion will be strengthened when 
we come to discuss the nature of the invisible universe, and to 
see that it cannot possibly have been changed into the present, 
but must exist independently now. It is, moreover, very closely 
connected with the present system, inasmuch as this may be 
looked upon as having come into being through its means. 
Thus we are led to believe that there exists now an invisible 
order of things, intimately connected with the present, and 
capable of acting energetically upon it, — for, in truth, the 
energy of the present system is to be looked upon as origi- 
nally derived from the invisible." 

Upon the subject immediately under consideration they go 
on to say : " Let us begin by supposing that we possess a frame, 
or the rudiments of a frame, connecting us with the invisible 
universe, which we may call the spiritual body. 

" Now each thought that we think is accompanied by certain 
molecular motions and displacements of the brain, and part of 
these, let us allow, are in some way stored up in that organ, so 
as to produce what may be termed our material or physical 
memory. Other parts of these motions are, however, com- 
municated to the spiritual or invisible body, and are there stored 
up, forming a memory which may be made use of when that 
body is free to exercise its functions. 

" Again, one of the arguments which proves the evidence of 
the invisible universe demands that it shall be full of energy 



UNITY OF PERSONALITY. 25 I 

when the present universe is defunct. We can therefore very 
well imagine that after death, when the spiritual body is free to 
exercise its functions, it may be replete with energy, and have 
eminently the power of action in the present, retaining also a 
hold upon the past, inasmuch as the memory of past events 
has been stored up in it, and thus preserving the two essential 
requisites of a continuous intelligent existence." 

This is sufficient to assure us, negatively, that there are no 
scientific grounds upon which to conclude that the dissolution 
of the gross and palpable body deprives the personality of its 
essential physical mechanism ; but, on the contrary, that there 
is better reason to hold, positively, that the truer impalpable 
super-sensible ' spiritual body ' still continues, and retains all 
the energies and potentialities possessed by the sensible body 

But as we have seen that the mechanical mode of the self 
has its ground and only title to reality in the personality, — *- and 
in this we shall be still further certified as we proceed, — we are 
unable, in any way we can make articulate to ourselves, to 
conceive of its discontinuity or dissolution. That we cannot 
positively construe to ourselves the state or condition of the 
personality after death, must be admitted, but it must be 
remembered that such state or condition would be an actuality, 
and that we are in no worse case with regard to this than we 
are with respect to any other possible unexperienced fact. We 
cannot in advance of experience imagine even a new flavor, a 
new perfume, a new state or phenomenon of any sort whatever, 
even of this present world, though we are quite sure many such 
facts of experience will, in the course of time, be revealed to 
us. All we can do by the powers of the imagination, as we 
saw in discussing that psychical energy, is to combine and 
arrange, under the laws of thought, the materials already in our 
possession, by experience ; but never by any possibility can we 
introduce any absolutely new element into a fabric of fancy. 
Now, of a super-sensible world we have no possible experience, 



252 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

and, with our present powers fitted to the needs of a visible 
world, we never can have any; and thus shall never, in this 
life, be able to gather the least material through which to con- 
strue such a post-mortal existence. It follows, therefore, that 
we are, by the necessities of the case, utterly incompetent to 
form any conception of the state or condition of a super-sensi- 
ble existence ; and so our failure in this regard in no wise 
makes against the probability of such a future state. 

The case then stands thus : before we could conclude that 
the self — the, to us, one and only absolutely indisputable 
certainty — suffers or could suffer annihilation, we need to have 
the most overwhelming evidence ; whereas such evidence is in 
no particular forthcoming • but, on the contrary, we have much 
proof against the hypothesis and in support of the conviction 
among all men and in all ages, that the human personality does 
not terminate at death. 

All nature is full of exemplifications of bodily transformations. 
One example out of the multitude will be sufficient for our 
purpose, and I fix upon a species of the cicadae — the ' seven- 
teen-year locust.' Passing over the twenty-five or thirty bodily 
transformations which it undergoes during its long larval exist- 
ence underground, it at last bores its way to the surface, and 
appears above ground, completely encased in a hard, horny 
body, with legs, antennae, and all the paraphernalia of a creep- 
ing bug. It makes for the nearest tree and begins to climb, 
but does not get far before an astonishing change takes place. 
The shell splits down the middle of the thorax, the mask (larva) 
is left behind, the pupa passes into the perfect cicada, emerging 
an altogether different creature in function and appearance, 
now with iridescent wings, an astonishing instrument for the 
production of sound, and everything ready prepared to enter 
in a moment upon a sphere of existence wholly new and unlike 
any of the many through which it had previously passed. The 
shell or mask, with all its legs and digging apparatus perfect, 



UNITY OF PERSONALITY. 253 

looking still very like the creature of which it is now but the 
exuvium, still clings to the tree, while the real creature, in its 
new mechanism and new splendor, spreads its wings in the 
aerial world, and sets up its ear-splitting song. 

Now in this, and in innumerable like larval changes, the 
transformation is, it is true, from one form of gross matter to 
another ; but it is clearly unscientific to urge an objection 
which turns upon a mere degree of refinement. Substitute for 
the visible substance of the emerging pupa one of the many 
impalpable and invisible forms of matter, and we should have 
some far-away, but doubtless quite analogous, transformation, to 
the emergence of the spiritual body from the ' mask ' of the 
sensible, common form of matter which encloses our more per- 
fect bodies, fitting them to our present uses, while they are 
preparing for a higher, hyper-sensible existence. 



254 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

WHAT IS ' THING ' ? CONSTRUCTION OF MATTER. 

Illusions of nature. What underlies phenomena ? Pure Being. 
' Thing ' that which affects and is affected. The position of Bishop 
Berkeley. Quoted. Analytical physics and construction of matter. Bos- 
covich's theory. Molecular Mechanics. Clerk Maxwell. Professor Tait. 
Sir William Thompson's vortical atom. Difficulties. Le Sage's theory. 
Ether. The physicists driven into metaphysic. Atoms ' manufactured 
articles.' 

NATURE gives us constant warnings not to accept appear- 
ances for more than they are worth. Whatever appears 
is, in so far, true ; but we are expected to learn that there is 
always a deeper truth for the sake of which the appearance is, 
and for which, indeed, it must be. The appearance, though 
not real in its own right, is not a delusion, but becomes one 
when we stop upon it, and insist on taking it for an end in 
itself. Thus illusions, by our own fault, constantly pass into 
delusions. 

There is no just ground to complain of being deceived by 
the appearances in the natural world, though there is nothing 
that would not serve as an example of how we accept the seem- 
ing for the real. We see the vault of heaven above us, but we 
know that it is an illusion. The sun and the moon, with the 
myriad worlds at every possible difference of distance, and 
moving at enormous velocities in every direction, are all ap- 
parently brought together on this spherical surface, and worlds 
and systems present themselves to us as fixed and glittering 
points. If there is one thing clear to us, it is that the earth 
under our feet is at rest and immovable, and yet its motions, 



CONSTRUCTION OF MATTER. 255 

in rapidity and variety, rival the particles of dust in the 
fiercest whirlwind. We see the celestial bodies cross the heav- 
ens from east to west, but we know that the movement is not 
in them, but in us. The rainbow hung in the clouds is not 
there, but on the retina of the eye. 

It is quite the same in terrestrial things. The hues of the lily, 
its perfume, its apparent magnitude, are not in it, but us. The 
hoot of the owl, the warmth of the fire, the flavor of the peach, 
are not realities of the outer world, but are only states and con- 
ditions of our own sensibilities. What do we see of the vibra- 
tions which are the physical basis of sound, heat, electricity, 
light, and perhaps all material phenomena? 

Then do our senses deceive us ? No, certainly not. They 
do just what by their office and nature they are appointed to 
do. As Lotze says, " Color and sound are no worse because 
they are our sensations." 

But the question presses itself upon us, What is it that ap- 
pears ? What is ' thing ' ? We do not ask now, how we know 
'thing,' but, What is it? 

In the first place, it cannot be any mere quality, nor the sum 
of any number of qualities. Hardness cannot separate itself 
from the 'thing' which is hard. The weight of a body changes 
as it is carried from the equator to the pole ; and if it could 
reach the centre of the earth, its terrestrial gravity would be 
zero. We can form no possible notion of resistance, if there be 
no somewhat to resist. And so, all that list of the qualities of 
matter, called primary, because they depend not upon us, but 
upon the ultimate structure of body, presuppose a substratum 
— substans — or substance — something standing under and 
supporting these qualities. It is of this underlying something 
that we inquire. 

Let us then make a search for it. Take any concrete object 
and strip it of its properties one by one ; take away its color, 
its weight, its hardness, its figure, size, and structure, and what- 



256 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

ever else is discoverable to the senses. Since its dimensions 
are gone, it must have lost extension, and dwindled to a mathe- 
matical point. It would still have place or whereness, but posi- 
tion is something it has, not what it is, and as a quality must 
go. It may still be thought of as having a sort of ghost of its 
past, as having once been ; that must go, too, and it will then 
be out of time and out of space, with nothing predicable of it. 
It will be just what we mean by ' nothing' ; and yet we are still 
speaking of ' it ' ; and in our stripping process, up to the last 
moment, when the last token of its qualitative existence was 
taken away, we had to assume the ' it ' as still existing ; and 
unless we admit, as we cannot, that quality can be substance, 
since we have taken nothing but qualities away, its being — its 
' itness ' — must still remain in its pure form ; and we are 
compelled to say with Hegel, " Pure Being is Pure Nothing." 

It is not our province to build up the universe ; we have 
quite enough to do, to understand something of its nature and 
laws, now that it is existent ; but if we were to attempt it, we 
should like some better footing to start with than the perfect 
emptiness — (no ; emptiness is a quality or condition, and Pure 
Being cannot have even that) — the perfect nothingness (if 
that does any better) of Pure Being ; but even the qualifying 
word ' pure ' has no right to nourish before the word ' Being ' ; 
and, to have even ' Being,' is to have the attribute or quality 
of being, so that neither this nor any name or sign can be left 
it. It must not even be thought upon, — nay, not even ban- 
ished from thought ! 

The first, and every step towards recovering reality, as we 
know it in the universe, from the utter nothingness of such an 
ultimate subject, with motor and movement engulfed of noth- 
ing, would present the absurdity of starting on a quest for what 
has no name, nor place, nor time, nor other mark by which it 
could be known ; and if this difficulty could be got over and 
it could be found, it would have nothing to which any of the 



CONSTRUCTION OF MATTER. 257 

qualities it has given up could be attached. And yet this is 
not far from what is attempted by the Absolutists. 

We do not sympathize with them in their efforts, and are 
quite content to expend our energies in attempting to under- 
stand something of the actual, beginning our efforts far this 
side of mere Being. Lotze says : " Reality means for us the 
1 Being ' of a somewhat that is capable of being affected and 
producing effects. Everything with which this definition com- 
ports, is accordingly called a ' reality,' — that is to say, has 
this title. But there cannot be a ' reality per se ' — which were 
nothing — as the bearer of this title. What is supposed to be 
real must merit this designation by being susceptible, through 
its own definite and significant nature, of having reality in the 
meaning alleged." 

To come back, then, to ' thing,' we can only say that it is 
what by the nature of its actual existence, under the intuitions 
of time and space, produces effects and is affected. These 
effects in us we know, and so know ' thing,' or body, or sub- 
stance directly. Whether substance is material or spiritual 
we need not ask, because the question really means nothing. 
Since, confessedly, nobody knows or can conceive of what 
matter is, we travel wholly out of the record when we under- 
take to pronounce upon whether it is like this, or like that. 
Matter is just what it is, and just as it is, it appears to us — 
now in one phase, now in another, all equally true, and equally 
real. The very nature and purpose of ' thing ' is to affect us 
and other things ; and when we try to force another meaning, 
which seeks to see beneath the nature of ' thing,' and find an- 
other nature upon which its world-nature is founded, we but 
commit ourselves to an infinite regressus. 

This is, substantially, the position of Bishop Berkeley, whom 
so many people, even to this day, fail to understand. " I am 
of a vulgar cast," he says, " simple enough to believe my senses, 
and leave things as I find them. To be plain, it is my opinion 



258 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

that the real things are those very things I see and feel and 
perceive by my senses," Again, " For my part, I can as well 
doubt of my being as of the being of those things which I 
actually perceive by sense ; it being a manifest contradiction 
that any sensible object should be immediately perceived by 
sight or touch, and at the same time have no existence in 
nature, since the very existence of an unthinking being consists 
in being perceived" 

This he is constantly declaring, and yet, the world, in the 
main, will have it — great and good men insisted upon it in his 
day — that he did not believe in the reality of things. One is at 
liberty to reject his theory, but not to misrepresent what he 
taught. " I do not argue," he says, " against the existence of 
any one thing that we can apprehend either by sense or reflec- 
tion. That the things I see with my eyes and touch with my 
hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least question. The 
only thing whose existence we deny is that which philosophers 
call matter or corporeal substance. And in doing this, there 
is no damage done to the rest of mankind, who, I dare say, 
will never miss it." His denial is only of that ' nothing ' which 
we found to remain in thought after everything had been taken 
away from our object a moment ago. Berkeley's position is 
admirably put by Lewes in his " Biographical History of Phi- 
losophy." " If by matter you understand that which is seen, 
felt, tasted, and touched, then I say matter exists ; . I am as 
firm a believer in its existence as any one can be, and herein I 
agree with the vulgar. If, on the contrary, you understand by 
matter that occult substratum which is not seen, not felt, not 
tasted, and not touched, — that of which the senses do not, 
cannot, inform you, — then I say I believe not in the existence 
of matter, and herein I differ from the philosophers and agree 
with the vulgar." 

This presents the issue sharply. Nobody denies the exist- 
ence of matter in the phenomenal sense, i.e. as a somewhat 



CONSTRUCTION OF MATTER. 259 

which offers resistance, and is known to the self. But the 
question is as to whether, if we could go on dividing and divid- 
ing, and could carry the process far enough, we should finally 
come to bits of matter incapable of further division or change ; 
that is, whether there is an eternally subsisting, dead, unknown, 
and unknowable stuff out of which the external universe is con- 
structed, or not. It was this which was questioned by Berke- 
ley, and is questioned by the advanced thinkers, metaphysicians, 
and physicists in our day as welL 

It will be well, certainly interesting, to consider briefly what 
is thought of the nature of matter from the side of analytical 
physics. 

Dr. Thomas Young, than whom a more profound mathema- 
tician and physicist scarce ever lived, in discussing the theory 
of light a hundred years ago, came to the conclusion that the 
diameter of a particle in a substance of the density of water 
" must be less than the hundred and forty thousandth part of 
its distance from its neighboring particle, and thus the whole 
space occupied by the substance must be as little filled as the 
whole of England would be by a hundred men, placed at the 
distances of about thirty miles from each other." 

Upon this hypothesis, a particle of such a substance would be 
relatively about twelve times further from its nearest neighbor 
than the earth is from the sun ; or, to put it a little differently, 
if the particle were magnified to the size of the earth, and the 
distance in the same ratio, the particle would be more than a 
billion of miles removed from its nearest neighbors. 

Since Dr. Young's day the mathematicians have done an 
immense work in molecular physics, so that it is now a well- 
established title in mechanics. We can but glance at some of 
the salient points touching the construction of matter. 

Perhaps the most famous of all the hypotheses on the subject 
of the composition of matter is that put forth, now more than 
a hundred years ago, by Father Boscovich, a Jesuit priest. 



260 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

He attempts to get rid of a difficulty which meets those who 
contend for the continuity of matter, and those who hold that 
it is discrete, or composed of aggregations of elements of such 
character as to be in the last analysis essential units. Those 
who, like Descartes, hold that extension is the essence of 
matter, are of the first class ; and in their view there can be 
no separation of one bit of matter, either large or small, from 
another, but there is a material plenum, or absolute fulness, in 
the universe. This may be better understood by applying the 
notion to a substance of a homogeneous character, such as 
water, in which all drops flow into each other so that there is 
no discontinuity. The whole may be divided into drops ; the 
drops when thus apparently separated have matter, as air, 
which connects them, and if these should be separated again, 
there is still a subtler form of matter, as ether, which maintains 
the continuity. Thus we may and must have the possibility of 
infinite divisibility, but never discontinuity. 

The other school of thought hold that there are ultimate 
atoms, very small indeed, but still of some magnitude, and of 
such character as to defy all possible effort at diremption ; and 
that these distinct and separate entities, lying far below our 
powers of vision, exist according to certain laws or orders, and 
compose what we know as substance. 

Boscovich abandons the notion of any ultimate, hard, self- 
subsisting bodies or atoms in this sense, and holds that there 
are only mathematical points existing, in the ultimate analysis, 
which however he endows with mass or inertia, and makes 
capable of retaining their identity, with power of movement, 
and of action and reaction on other like endowed points. 
They are centres of ( force,' attractive and repulsive, alternat- 
ing according to the distances between them ; ending on 
the one hand in the law of gravitation, when the distance is 
greater than about a thousandth of an inch, and on the other, 
in insuperable repulsion, when one point-atom is infinitely close 



CONSTRUCTION OF MATTER. 26 1 

to another. Two of these atoms can never occupy the same 
place, and can never be in actual contact, since such contact 
would require an infinite force. Now, since there are alterna- 
tions of the force of attraction and repulsion, there must be at 
certain distances positions of neutrality ; that is, where attrac- 
tion changes into repulsion, or the reverse. These are posi- 
tions of equilibrium or permanence. Now, a certain number 
of these force-atoms, lying in every possible direction from 
each other, occupying positions of neutrality, must be in a state 
of equilibrium, and constitute a system. They will defend 
their ground against all other systems by the law of composi- 
tion and distance, so that we thus have sensible bodies, when 
there are enough of such communities to produce a reaction on 
our sensibilities. 

If the distances between these centres are changed by being 
forced into new positions of neutrality, either closer together or 
further apart, the nature of the substance is changed ; so that 
the differences between all material substances are accounted 
for by the more or less remoteness of the assumed centres in 
its constitution, and are not at all due to any essential differ- 
ences in the original stuff. 

This theory at first blush seems wild enough. But as modi- 
fied by the latest results of molecular science, it stands its 
ground ; nor do the physicists, in a general way, and with an 
exception to be noted, seem to see or desire any escape. Ao- 
cepting Professor Clerk Maxwell as authority, we shall follow 
him chiefly in stating the assumptions and conclusions of 
molecular mechanics. 

First, bodies are made up of parts, each part being capable 
of motion, and these parts act and react on each other in con- 
sonance with the principle of the conservation of energy. All 
these parts are in motion, rest being only a particular case of 
motion. "The phenomena of the diffusion of gases and liquids 



262 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

through each other show that there may be a motion of the 
small parts of a body which is not perceptible to us." 

The small parts are not assumed' to be of one uniform mag- 
nitude, nor even to have magnitude and figure at all. Each of 
them must have mass, and they must have the power of acting 
on each other, when near enough, like visible bodies. The 
properties of body are determined by the configuration and 
movement of its small parts. 

The investigations which lead to the conclusions arrived at 
in this branch of mechanics are chiefly based upon the nature 
and action of gases under what is known as the ' kinetic theory 
of gases.' It is, in brief, that a gas consists of a swarm of per- 
fectly elastic molecules in constant motion with different veloci- 
ties, acting on each other only when they come infinitesimally 
close, — a thing, however, which rarely happens, — at all other 
times moving freely in unobstructed paths, the dimensions of 
the unoccupied spaces being immensely great compared with 
the diameter of the molecules. The molecules impinging 
against the sides of the containing vessel are driven back in all 
possible directions, and without loss of velocity. 

We have nothing to do here with the theory, as such, nor 
can we follow, even in outline, the mathematical and experi- 
mental reasoning in its favor. Proposed by Kroenig, given form 
to by Clausius, modified and sustained by Maxwell and Thomp- 
son, it holds the favor of the scientific world. It is directly 
dependent upon the theory of molecules, and perhaps now on 
Sir William Thompson's theory of vortical atoms. 

Let us see what a molecule must be in order to accommo- 
date itself to the work required of it by the physicists. A 
molecule is a system composed of atoms, — the atom being the 
ultimate mass-unit. Molecules are complex and of different 
kinds, the several orders depending upon the number and 
arrangement of the atoms which compose them. This combi- 
nation is not permanent, but may be broken up from one 



CONSTRUCTION OF MATTER. 263 

cause or another ; in which case new molecular combinations 
result, and the nature of the substance which they compose is 
changed. This is seen constantly in chemical reactions, as in 
the case of water ; the particles are the result of the aggrega- 
tions of molecules of a definite composition ; when this molecu- 
lar condition is broken up, as may easily be, there appear two 
gases, one composed of oxygen molecules, and the other of 
hydrogen molecules. A system of atoms, then, which hang 
together for a measurable period, or until violently disrupted, 
is a molecule. 

The dimensions and weights of molecules have been calcu- 
lated with a sufficient degree of certainty to carry conviction 
to the scientific mind, though the demand upon the credulity of 
a layman is such as to make him doubt if he be not dreaming. 
Clerk Maxwell states that the fair probability is that 200,000,- 
000,000,000,000,000 molecules of hydrogen would weigh a 
milligramme. The diameters of these miniature worlds are on 
much the same scale of magnificent littleness. About 2,000,000 
molecules of hydrogen in a row would measure a millimeter. 
Professor Maxwell tells us that Loschmidt illustrates these 
measurements by the smallest possible magnitude visible to the 
microscope. A cube whose edge is the four- thousandth of a 
millimeter may be taken as the minimum visibile. Such a cube 
would contain from sixty to one hundred million molecules of 
oxygen or nitrogen ; but since the molecule of organized sub- 
stances contains, on an average, about fifty of the more ele- 
mentary atoms, we may assume that the smallest organized 
particle visible under the microscope contains about two million 
molecules of organic matter. Another way of putting it — 
for it passes all real comprehension in any form — is : if one 
were to attempt to count the number of molecules in (say) a 
metallic mass the size of a pin's head, allowing the count to be 
at the rate of a thousand a second, it would require about two 



264 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

billion five hundred million years ! And yet, the space occu- 
pied is by no means full — would be called rather empty. 

Professor Tait, in his " Recent Advances," gives his readers 
a much needed preliminary caution in entering upon the sub- 
ject of the structure of matter. He reminds them of what 
" every one worthy the name of mathematician " must know, 
" that there is no such thing as absolute size, — there is relative 
greatness and smallness, — nothing more. To human beings, 
things appear small which are just visible to the naked eye — 
very small when they require a powerful microscope to render 
them visible. The distance to a fixed star from us is enormous 
compared with that of the sun ; but there is absolutely noth- 
ing to show that even a portion of matter which to our most 
powerful microscopes appears as hopelessly minute, as the 
most distant star appears in our telescopes, may not be as 
astonishingly complex in its structure as is that star itself, even 
if it far exceed our own sun in magnitude. Nothing is more 
preposterously unscientific than to assert (as is constantly done 
by the quasi-scientific writers of the day) that with the utmost 
strides attempted by science we should necessarily be sensibly 
nearer to a conception of the ultimate nature of matter. Only 
sheer ignorance could assert that there is any limit to the 
amount of information which human beings may in time ac- 
quire of the constitution of matter. However far we may go, 
there will still appear before us something further to be assailed. 
The small separate particles of a gas are each, no doubt, less 
complex in structure than the whole visible universe ; but the 
comparison is a comparison of two infinities. Think of this 
and eschew popular science, whose dicta are pernicious just as 
they are the outcome of presumptuous ignorance." 

This reminds one of Pascal's reflection that man is placed 
between two infinities, the infinitely great and the infinitely 
little, the one just as marvellous as the other. It is natural 
that we should feel, when an object passes out of reach of the 



CONSTRUCTION OF MATTER. 265 

senses that it loses those clearly marked differences which dis- 
tinguish it while within their scope ; though perhaps the mind, 
at least in our day, is more ready to delve down into the 
unknown in the direction of the infinitely little, than to ascend 
into the realm of the infinitely great. Clerk Maxwell in speak- 
ing of this minute world points out that we are set face to face 
with physiological theories, and warns the histologist not to 
imagine that structural details of infinitely small dimensions can 
furnish an explanation of the infinite variety which exists in the 
properties and functions of the most minute organisms. He 
remarks that while one microscopic germ is capable of devel- 
oping into a highly organized animal, another germ, equally 
microscopic, becomes, when developed, an animal of a totally 
different kind. " Do all the differences, infinite in number, 
which distinguish the one animal from the other," he asks, 
" arise each from some difference in the structure of the respec- 
tive germs? Even if we admit this as possible, we shall be 
called upon by the advocates of Pangenesis to admit still 
greater marvels. For the microscopic germ, according to this 
theory, is no mere individual, but a representative body, con- 
taining numbers collected from every rank of a long-drawn 
ramification of the ancestral tree, the numbers of these mem- 
bers being amply sufficient not only to furnish the hereditary 
characteristics of every organ of the body, and every habit of 
the animal from birth to death, but also to afford a stock of 
latent gemmules to be passed on in an inactive state from 
germ to germ, until at last the ancestral peculiarity which it 
represents is revived in some remote descendant. 

" Some of the exponents of this theory of heredity have 
attempted to elude the difficulty of placing a whole world of 
wonders within a body so small and so devoid of visible struc- 
ture as a germ, by using the phrase ' structureless germs.' Now, 
one material system can differ from another only in the con- 
figuration and motion which it has at a given instant. To 



266 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

explain differences of function and development of a germ 
without assuming differences of structure is, therefore, to 
admit that the properties of a germ are not those of a purely 
material system." 

Resuming our consideration of the molecule, we are told 
that the results of spectroscopic investigations confirm the fact, 
already arrived at, that in gases, when in a rarefied condition, 
each molecule is at such distances from every other that it exe- 
cutes its vibrations in an undisturbed and regular manner. 

But serious difficulties present themselves in the way of the 
unit-atoms out of which the molecule is built. To quote our 
authority again : " The small, hard body imagined by Lucretius, 
and adopted by Newton, was intended for the express purpose 
of accounting for the permanence of the properties of bodies. 
But it fails to account for the vibrations of a molecule as re- 
vealed by the spectroscope. We may indeed suppose the atom 
elastic, but this is to endow it with the very property for the 
explanation of which, as exhibited in aggregate bodies, the 
atomic constitution was originally assumed. The massive cen- 
tres of force imagined by Boscovich may have more to recom- 
mend them to the mathematician, who has no scruple in 
supposing them to be invested with the power of attracting and 
repelling according to any law of the distance which it may 
please him to assign. Such centres of force are no doubt in 
their own nature indivisible, but then they are also, singly, in- 
capable of vibration. To obtain vibration we must imagine 
molecules consisting of many such centres ; but, in so doing, the 
possibility of these centres being separated altogether is again 
introduced. Besides, it is questionable scientific taste, after 
using atoms so freely to get rid of forces acting at sensible dis- 
tances, to make the whole function of the atoms an action at 
insensible distances." 

To meet these difficulties, Sir William Thompson, taking up 
the work of Helmholtz on the subject of vortical motion — work 



CONSTRUCTION OF MATTER. 267 

based upon the foundations laid by Lagrange and other great 
mathematicians of the last century — has advanced a new 
phase of the composition of matter. It is called the theory 
of Vortex-atoms, and is received with decided favor by the 
mathematicians. He would be a bold man who should say that 
he fully understands it. It relies entirely upon the higher 
analysis in method — indeed its author and those who pretend 
to follow him, complain that the calculus and other known 
methods have not sufficient grasp to handle the questions it 
presents. We therefore cannot be expected to do much to 
make it comprehensible ; but we may get some notion of its 
general trend by sticking pretty close to Professor Tait's ex- 
planation. 

First, it is easy enough to understand the vortex-ring. We 
have an illustration in the rings an expert smoker sometimes 
makes for the amusement of children — making a round hole 
with his lips and emitting the smoke in puffs. Indeed, it seems 
to have been an illustration of this kind, made by Professor 
Tait (only he used a box filled with ammoniacal gas, and driven 
out of a hole in one end by blows upon a flexible substance at 
the other), which first suggested the theory to Sir William 
Thompson. Such a vortex-ring moves as if it were an inde- 
pendent solid ; and " if the air were a perfect fluid, — if there 
were no such thing as fluid-friction in air," — such a vortex-ring 
would move on forever as a solid mass. When two such rings, 
even in air so little complying with the conditions of a perfect 
fluid " impinge upon one another, they behave like solid elastic 
rings. They vibrate vehemently after the shock, just as if they 
were solid rings of india-rubber." These rings may be varied 
— practically, to some extent — theoretically, without limit. 
Vortex-filaments may exist with any number of knots and twists 
in them — and, practically they may be made to link together 
and present a certain degree of permanence. 

All this is yet worlds away from the vortex-atom ; but assume 



268 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

a perfect fluid, possessed of inertia, invariable density, and per- 
fect mobility, — call in the powerful aid of mathematical anal- 
ysis, — refine and continue to refine, until the ordinary thinker 
has been hopelessly left behind, and somewhere in such a 
thought-spun world the vortex-atom may exist. 

If the proposed theory be a true explanation of the facts of 
nature, then rotary motion of the proposed perfect fluid (which 
itself is not matter ; matter being a mode of motion of this 
fluid) is the mechanical basis of all that appeals to our senses. 
The theory, however, is not yet established ; but we cannot 
fail to see in the persistent efforts to overcome the difficulties 
in the way of the atom, how desperately shaken the scientific 
world is as to the nature of matter. We shall have to wait 
patiently on the mathematicians (the controversy being far 
beyond all mere experimental method), since, as Professor Tait 
tells us, " to investigate what takes place when one circular vor- 
tex-atom impinges upon another, and the whole motion is not 
symmetrical about an axis, is a task which may employ perhaps 
the lifetimes, for the next two or three generations, of the best 
mathematicians in Europe ; unless, in the meantime, some 
mathematical method, enormously more powerful than any- 
thing we at present have, be devised for the purpose of solving 
this special problem." 

That there are serious difficulties lying in the way of the vor- 
tex-atom is freely confessed. Should it succeed in getting 
itself thoroughly established from the rotarial and kinematic 
side, it has still grave difficulties to encounter. Among these 
is, the demand upon it, as upon all other theories, to account 
for mass and gravitation. In Thompson's theory, mass- — that 
is to say, inertia — is assumed in the perfect fluid. But inertia 
is a property of matter, and not a property of motion. The 
difficulty remains without serious attempt at solution. 

With regard to gravitation, the mathematicians agree that 
present methods are sufficient to show that the vortex-atoms 



CONSTRUCTION OF MATTER. 269 

cannot be allowed to exert a pull on each other such as is now 
assumed to exist between bodies ; so that a serious alternative 
is presented at once — either the theory must go, or this 
assumed attraction of gravitation is not a fact of nature. 

This looks threatening, but there is a possibility of escape. 
Le Sage, of Geneva, put forth a theory, now nearly a hundred 
years ago, to explain gravitation — or rather, to explain it away, 
so far at least as the notion of a pull between bodies enters it. 
It is entirely in line with the trend of modern mechanics, and 
serves the turn of Thompson's theory fairly well ; and is also 
far enough out of the run of common thought to delight 
the wildest scientific imagination. A brief statement must 
suffice. 

Le Sage proposed to abandon the notion that bodies or 
masses, large or small, are pulled together by solicitations sub- 
sisting between material elements, and to adopt instead the 
notion that they are driven together by the impact of streams 
of ultra-mundane corpuscules which are flying about in all pos- 
sible directions. These he supposes to come with enormous 
velocities from regions infinitely remote, and to be so minute, 
compared with the distances between them, that a collision can 
rarely happen. If a particle of gross or common matter could 
be exposed to this ceaseless pelting from every conceivable 
quarter, the result would be that the blows would, on the whole, 
neutralize each other, and the particle would retain its place ; 
but this could never happen, since the other particles in exist- 
ence must be taken into account. Every particle must shield 
every other from a portion of this pelting, and just in so far 
each particle will have its equilibrium disturbed, and so be 
driven in the direction of least resistance, with a velocity pre- 
cisely the same as that now effected by the supposed pulling 
power of gravitation, the law of the inverse squares obtaining 
as before. Of course the space occupied by gross matter must 
be so little filled by the essential atoms composing it, as to 



270 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

permit the enormously greater number of ultra-mundane cor- 
puscules to pass through unimpeded. 

By this theory the vortex-atoms would be saved the need of 
being what is called heavy, or of imparting weight to the bodies 
they compose ; all this would be relegated to the ultra- mundane 
— ultra-stellar — corpuscules, without inquiring as to what that 
region can really be, or how the projectile energy is originally 
generated. 

There is another fundamental hypothesis of physics which 
demands attention, and that is the assumption of the existence 
of an inter-stellar medium, called ether. The marvels of the 
atomic theories have drawn heavily upon our imaginations, but 
in this a still larger demand is made upon us. 

The need of something to fill the immeasurable spaces 
between the myriad worlds is, from a metaphysical point of 
view, very urgent. To say there is ' nothing ' is to use the 
word in a sense far this side of the absolute naught. To say 
that it is filled by space is, as we shall see further on, mislead- 
ing and void of meaning. But we pass this. 

The need of some sort of medium from the physical stand- 
point is equally urgent. The question presents itself sharply 
in the undulatory theory of light. The Newtonian or Corpus- 
cular theory was — for it may be now considered dead — that 
light was a material substance, consisting of extremely small 
corpuscules emitted from luminous objects and producing the 
sensation of light by impinging upon the eye. ' They were sup- 
posed to be shot to the earth from the sun and other luminous 
bodies, and thus the demand for an intervening substance was 
obviated, at least, from the physical point of view ; but diffi- 
culties of its own immediately presented themselves. The 
theory was questioned, almost from the beginning. With the 
enormous velocity, — nearly two hundred thousand miles a 
second, — and with the least possible mass in the corpuscules, 
the momentum would inevitably destroy such a delicate organ 



CONSTRUCTION OF MATTER. 2J I 

as the eye ; but the most refined test fails to detect the slight- 
est possible signs of impact. There are many other difficulties 
in the way of the emission theory, the most decisive perhaps 
being found in its inability to explain many phenomena, espe- 
cially those due to what is now known as ' interference.' As a 
single example, in the case of light from one definite source, 
divided into two portions by mirrors, so that they shall fall on 
a screen in such wise that the paths passed over shall differ by 
a certain very slight distance, while either part alone produces 
light only, when the other part is added, dark spaces appear. 
There is no possible reason for these dark areas except the 
added light ; so that the increase of light produces darkness. 
This could not be if it were a substance. 

The theory of Newton has given way to what is known as the 
Undulatory, or Wave Theory of light. It was originally sug- 
gested, perhaps, by Hooke, a celebrated contemporary of New- 
ton, but it first took shape in the hands of the great astronomer 
and mathematician, Christian Huygens. It is not necessary to 
say more than that, granted an intervening substance of high 
elasticity, a disturbance at one point must be propagated with 
great rapidity throughout its extent, and without the conse- 
quences which would attend a projectile under like velocity. 

Such media, under the name of ethers, had been freely 
assumed in the past, extending back to the remotest antiquity, 
to account for all manner of phenomena. At the time, and 
shortly after Huygens proposed his luminiferous ether, the feel- 
ing in the minds of scientific men against ether hypotheses, no 
doubt, acted to prejudice most students of science against the 
new theory. Certain it is, that it was opposed by the most 
eminent mathematicians and physicists, Laplace, Malus, Biot, 
Brewster, etc., and that the theory of Newton maintained its 
ground until, in the early part of this century, it was attacked 
by Dr. Thomas Young, backed by Augustin Fresnel. The con- 
test was long and animated, but they succeeded in adducing 



272 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

so many phenomena which the corpuscular theory could not 
account for, and which the other handled easily, that the old 
theory had to give way. It was given its coup de grace, per- 
haps, by Foucault when he succeeded experimentally in prov- 
ing that light travels more slowly through water than through 
air, — a condition of things demanded by the new theory, but 
directly in contravention of the requirements of the old. 

The wave theory has not only met the demands upon it in 
explaining the observed phenomena of light, but years ago it 
enabled Fresnel to anticipate ' circular polarization,' and re- 
cently the theory, in the hands of Sir W. Rowan Hamilton, 
achieved a triumph in optics quite analogous to the astronomi- 
cal feat of Leverrier and Adams in discovering the planet 
Neptune. 

The vindication of the existence of a luminiferous ether 
seems complete ; so much so, at least, that all cognate phe- 
nomena have come to lean confidently upon it for the ground 
of their explanation. But the demands of the theory upon the 
nature of the medium are exceedingly exacting. The phenom- 
ena of polarization, as explained under the theory, make it 
absolutely necessary that the vibration shall be transverse to the 
direction of propagation, and there is thus imposed upon the 
ether the necessity of being a solid. But this is not the worst ; 
it must be a solid of such rigidity as passes all comprehension. 
Its elastic force is reckoned to be over one million times that 
of air at the surface of the earth, which so far exceeds that of 
any known substance as not to be named in the same breath : 
a pressure which may be represented by the weight of a pile of 
granite blocks a foot square at the base and something like 
twenty million miles high. And yet we, the earth, and all mov- 
ing bodies, dense and rare, pass through it, or it through them, 
without discoverable resistance. 

It is still an open question as to whether this ether is con- 
tinuous or discrete. It is not ordinary or gross matter, but 



CONSTRUCTION OF MATTER. 2?3 

whether it is molecular in structure, or what is its constitution, 
is not agreed upon by science. Neither is it perfectly homo- 
geneous, i.e. equally distributed in all kinds of solids and other 
forms of gross matter, since light travels at different rates 
through substances of different densities, which means that the 
elasticity of the medium of transmission must differ in such 
substances. The theory of light, assuming the existence of 
the luminiferous ether, has still difficulties of its own to meet, 
and the demand is rapidly returning for a variety of ethers. 
At any rate, the mathematicians show little disposition to settle 
down permanently upon this single hypothesis, or to agree as 
to the demands to be made upon it. 

But, not to pursue the subject further, it must be admitted 
that the hope of reducing all phenomena to a homogeneous 
substratum free from contradictions is very remote ; and even 
if this could be accomplished, the old world-cry would still go 
up, What is it? and Whence came it? Further than this, it 
will hardly do for the physicists to cast scorn upon the meta- 
physicians on account of the refinements and subtleties in which 
they sometimes indulge, in view of the purely metaphysical 
regions and the metaphysical speculations into which science is 
itself so necessarily driven. 

As it is, we may safely conclude that the physicists do not 
know what 'thing' is more certainly than the metaphysicians. 
Even if the conclusion be that atoms are definite material enti- 
ties or world-stuff, the question is only pushed back to one 
deeper still. What and why they are at all, rises up and de- 
mands an answer as surely as any phenomenon in nature. Clerk 
Maxwell says : " In the present state of science, we have strong 
reasons for believing that in a molecule, or if not in a molecule, 
in one of its constituent atoms, we have something which has 
existed either from eternity or at least from times anterior to 
the existing order of nature. But besides this atom, there are 
immense numbers of other atoms of the same kind, and the 



274 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

constants of each of these atoms are incapable of adjustment 
by any process now in action. Each is physically independent 
of all the others. 

"Whether or not the conception of a multitude of beings 
existing from all eternity is in itself self-contradictory, the con- 
ception becomes palpably absurd when we attribute a relation 
of quantitive equality to all these beings. We are then forced 
to look beyond them to some common cause or common origin 
to explain why this singular relation of equality exists, rather 
than any one of the infinite number of possible relations of 
inequality." 

Professor Maxwell refers to Sir John Herschel's remark that 
atoms are to be compared to ' manufactured articles ' on ac- 
count of their uniformity, and, after giving the several possible 
meanings the expression may bear, says : " Which of these was 
present to the mind of Sir John Herschel we cannot now posi- 
tively affirm, but it was at least as likely to have been the last 
as the first, though it seems more probable that he meant to 
assert that a number of exactly similar things cannot be each of 
them eternal and self- existent, and must therefore have been 
made, and that he used the phrase ? manufactured articles ' to 
suggest the idea of their being made in great numbers." 



MATHEMATICS NOT ULTIMATELY EXACT. 275 



CHAPTER XXV. 

MATHEMATICS NOT ULTIMATELY EXACT. 

Position of mathematics in scientific inquiries. Mathematical processes 
develop contradictions. Surds. Asymptotes. Graphical illustration. Cis- 
soid of Diodes. Other cases. Right-lines intersecting with no common 
point. The concept ' infinity.' Illustration. 

SINCE the days of Newton, the position of the mathema- 
ticians with respect to physics has been assured ; but it 
has not been until our own times that their supremacy in this 
regard has been fully recognized. They absolutely dominate 
mechanics, and mechanics is now admitted to be the very soul 
of physics. After mathematical analysis has laid hold upon a 
subject, and pronounced a conclusion, the case is closed, in 
so far, at least, as the facts assumed are warranted. In the 
hands of genius this inexorable thought-machine has accom- 
plished wonders, and the mathematician still has wide fields 
before him, with, no doubt, better methods yet to come. We 
hear Professor Tait crying out for a more powerful instrument 
with which to handle successfully the vortex-atom ; and it is 
not unreasonable to expect, in view of the recent splendid dis- 
covery of Quaternions, that other and still more subtle analyti- 
cal methods will be brought to the aid of physics. 

Recognizing the title of the mathematics to the front rank 
of scientific thought, and with an admiration little short of 
reverence for its magic powers, it will not, I hope, be thought 
out of place to show, in an elementary way, that not only are 
there serious incompatibilities in the subject-matter submitted 
to investigation at its hands, but that the instrument itself, 



276 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

though the most perfect known, has its own incompatibilities 
— a fact which shows how impossible it is to raise even the 
most exact methods of thought above the possibility of emerg- 
ing contradictions. 

In the first place, Arithmetic is full of incompatibilities. As 
one out of any number of examples, take the case of a surd. 
The V7 (say) must have a definite value, and yet it has not, — 
or rather its value is neither entire nor fractional. We can 
approximate it as near as we please, thus, 2.645 75 1+, an d 
the decimal can be extended indefinitely ; but if it were drawn 
out across the earth's orbit to Aldebaran, there would yet be 
something lacking. But, it may be said, since this difference 
is growing less and less at each remove, it would disappear at 
last if the operation could be extended far enough. Not so; 
it is easily shown 1 that the exact value is impossible. Thus 
it appears that while this value must be somewhere between 
2 and 3, it cannot be at any exact point between, which is a 
flat contradiction. 

The incommensurability of magnitudes discovers itself every- 
where in geometry, as in the rectification and quadrature of 
the circle, the side and diagonal of a square, etc. 

Imaginary expressions, that is, the indicated even roots of 
negative quantities, are also inconceivable. It is impossible 
that any such root can exist ; and yet the Algebra has no diffi- 
culty in handling such expressions — combining and recom- 
bining them and arriving at perfectly definite and correct 
results. 

The asymptotic curves are also examples of incompatible 

1 The proof is very simple. Thus, let the y/~Z be any surd. If its 

value be expressible by a fraction, let t be such fraction in its simplest 

p pfl p* 

form. Thenv^ = -, and from this we have a = -5. But -5 must be an 

q q 2 f 

irreducible fraction ; so that we have an entire quantity equal to an irre- 
ducible fraction, which is absurd. 



MATHEMATICS NOT ULTIMATELY EXACT. 



277 



conceptions. That a curve shall continue to approach a line 
and never reach it, is the characteristic of all asymptotes. This 
contradiction can be made obvious without the aid of mathe- 
matical analysis ; and there are so many people who declare 
that they will not believe what is contradictory, that it may 
not be amiss to insert it. 

Imagine a bit of cardboard, rather large, set up vertically, as 
shown in this figure. 




Let there be two holes, one near the upper and the other 
the lower edge. Pass cords through these holes and unite the 
ends on the right as at A. From this point A mark a point 
on each cord, b and c, exactly at the same distance from A. 
Now keeping the cord stretched, let the point A move to the 
right, always at the same distance from the floor. It will be 
seen at once that the marked points b and c must continually 
approach each other as A moves to the right, and that theo- 
retically they never can come quite together; so that, though 
the two points approach each other forever, they never can 
meet. A horizontal line through AA would be the common 
asymptote to the loci of the two moving points. 

Again, it seems plain enough to common sense that no exact 
area can be enclosed so long as the bounding lines do not 
absolutely close on each other ; and yet, the mathematics 
presents many cases in which areas are definitely calculated, 



278 



MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 



though the limiting lines do not, and never can meet. Take 
as an example the Cissoid of Diocles. The curve may be 

described by points as follows : 
Let AB be the diameter of 
a given circle, and from the 
extremity A of the diameter 
draw a straight line AC to 
meet the tangent line at the 
other extremity, and mark the 
point P at a distance from C 
equal to the intercepted cord 
AD. Determine any number 
of other points in like way on 
other lines through A above 
and below the diameter AB. 
The locus of all the points so 
found will be the Cissoid. It 
manifestly has two infinite 
branches, and the tangent line 
will be a common asymptote. 
Now, although by the condi- 
tions, the extremities of the 
two branches can never reach 
the tangent, nevertheless it is 
demonstrable that the area be- 
tween the tangent and curves 
is exactly equal to three times 
the area of the circle. 

The following is a still more 
remarkable case. This curve, 
whose equation is given in the 
footnote on the following page, 
can never touch the axes X 
and Y, or, which is the same thing, constantly approaches the 




MATHEMATICS NOT ULTIMATELY EXACT. 



279 



axes above and below, and reaches them at infinity. 1 The 
area comprehended between the curve and the axis of Y 
above the line CD is proved 
to be exactly equal to the Y 
square CDEO, while the 
area of the portion XEDB 
is infinite. Since the curve 
continually approaches the 
axis of X, it is impossible 
to see why it does not as 
certainly close on X, as 
the upper end does on Y; 
or how the excluded por- 
tion of the plane can ever 
get within, so as to enable 
the area to be infinite. 

But, passing over innumerable contradictions which show 
themselves in the divers 'orders of contact/ 'singular solu- 
tions,' and indeed throughout the Infinitesimal Calculus, let us 
take a case of dire contradiction, as, for example, the propo- 
sition that two straight lines in the same plane and inclined to 




1 The equation of the above curve is y 2 
Differentiating, we have dx 



x 
— 2- , whence 



Jy. 



J y* 



+ €■ 



y 



Estimating the area from the axis of Y, giving y — 00, we have 

o = — -f c, c = 0, s' = — 

00 y 

Making y = I = DE, we have s" = 2 — ADEOY '; that is, twice the 
square CDEO. Taking the area between the limits y= 1 and y = o, we 
have 

Area BDEX= - - 2 = 00. 
o 



280 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

each other, do, and do not, intersect in a point. Take two 
lines, given by their equations, such that upon combining, the 
co-ordinates of their common point prove to be surds. Now, 
as we have seen, exact values for these co-ordinates are impos- 
sible, and therefore there cannot be a definite point which 
answers to them ; and since the lines must intersect in an exact 
point, they cannot logically intersect at all. 

This is all fine spun, of course, but it shows that the difficul- 
ties of thought which show themselves in studying the compo- 
sition of matter, time, space, cause, and in the whole domain 
of metaphysic, discover themselves also in mathematics, — 
that while in this science exactness is the rule, absolute deter- 
minism cannot be predicated of the exactest of all the exact 
sciences. 

These difficulties no more shake the foundations of mathe- 
matics than the insoluble contradictions in metaphysic disturb 
the current of every- day thinking ; but they do show that logic, 
even in its purest form, is not an infallible instrument, but has 
its ' little rifts ' which only the more surely bespeak it kin to 
the universe of mystery. One of the great evils of the day is 
that a large, and that a vigorous-minded, class of men, have 
undertaken to smooth out the folds in the world's vesture, and, 
with the rush and whirl of an unbalanced science, trample out 
of the heart of man all sense of wonder — all thought of the 
Ineffable which moves him to be silent and adore. 

Before leaving this subject, it will be well to consider for a 
moment how the ' infinite ' is to be construed. The word is 
used very loosely on all hands, but even in a technical and sci- 
entific sense there is often confusion of thought. 

To most minds infinity means something very great, either 
in length, or volume, or power, or minuteness, but still carrying 
with it some unit of comparison by which to estimate it. While 
in a popular way the word serves a good purpose in this sense, 
this meaning cannot be allowed from a scientific point of view. 



MATHEMATICS NOT ULTIMATELY EXACT. 28 1 

The infinite is not a huge finite ; indeed, it is just what the 
finite is not. It is therefore a great mistake to suppose that 
one can follow (say) a line on and on, and so arrive at infinity. 
The infinite absolutely refuses to be composed or made up by 
adding more and more, or by any process of reduplication. 
It cannot be approached — it is only to be reached — (if that 
word can be used at all in this sense) — per saltum ; and the 
leap is just as great last as first. For example, suppose we take 
the distance to the remotest fixed star as a unit — a distance 
(say) requiring light a thousand years (or any other number one 
likes) to travel; and suppose that every millionth of an inch in 
it were suddenly expanded into a length equal to the whole, 
and all strung out together, it would still be just as far from 
infinite length as any one of those unexpanded fractions. Not 
the most infinitesimal step has been taken to pass a chasm 
which is not even reached until the finite has ceased to be. 
The infinite differs from the finite, not in degree, but in kind. 
It is ' other ' to it, and in final analysis cannot be permitted to 
retain the remotest likeness. 

This may be illustrated very simply by the tangential func- 
tion of an arc. The tangent grows at first with moderate 
slowness from the origin, but with constantly increasing strides 
for equal increments of arc, until, when the arc approaches 90 , 
the length of the strides becomes each inconceivably greater 
than the last — greater than all the distance travelled from the 
origin — until, when the secant becomes nearly perpendicular 
to the initial diameter, the mind sinks under the overpowering 
sense of immensity; but the arc is not yet 90 , — -the mad 
flight goes on, and it is not until the last minutest difference 
of a difference of arc is passed — itself an impossible concep- 
tion, — not until the secant lets go its touch upon the tangent 
line and becomes parallel to it, that the function suddenly leaps 
the chasm which separates it from all finite values behind, and 
is — not becomes — infinite. It is not that in the last infinites!- 



282 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

mal of arc added, there is added to the stupendous length 
already gained by the tangent, enough to make it infinite, — 
for all that is zero in the presence of infinity, — but that a 
world-wide change has taken place, and it has ceased to be 
what it was — the finite — and become what it was not — the 
infinite. If one rightly takes this in, one gains some faint 
notion of the incommensurable character of the infinite ; and 
yet, there is no point in the whole movement in which the 
same incompatibility of thought does not present itself. It is 
the same marvellous truth which has met us all along our way 
— the passage from the finite to the infinite and back again — 
phenomenon of change in any sort — incomprehensible in 
thought, and yet ever taking place in fact. 



THE METAPHYSICAL ATTITUDE OF CHANGE. 283 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE METAPHYSICAL ATTITUDE OF CHANGE. CAUSE. 

The problem of Change. Quotation from Plato. The problem of 
Causation. Influence ' passing over.' Doctrine of ' Occasionalism.' 'Pre- 
established Harmony.' ' Divine Assistance.' Lotze quoted. Causation, as 
such, inexplicable. 

WE go on to show the incompatibilities of thought which 
discover themselves in the conception of 'change,' 
of 'motion/ and of 'cause.' Changes are so natural and so 
necessary that it seems to most minds a mere impertinence to 
inquire what ' change ' is. In practical life there is no need 
to ask such a question. Everybody knows what is meant, so 
long as no explanation is required, and this practical knowledge 
would do perfectly well if one could keep the question out of 
mind. But that is impossible, at least for those who are not 
content with the mere 'bread-and-butter' side of existence. 
The question is asked, and has been asked as far back as the 
dawn of speculative thought ; and it still waits such an answer 
as shall carry conviction to those who rightly take in the 
difficulty. 

The problem now is not, How can change be? for that 
would simply throw us back upon the question which lies be- 
hind all inquiries — How can anything be ? The question is, 
How can we account for the mutations we see going on, so as 
to make " the total idea of it without contradictions, and ade- 
quate to those facts of experience which we wish to designate 
by means of it "? 



284 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

Take, for example, a body at rest : How can it become a 
body in motion? Being at rest, and having no motion, by 
hypothesis, in moving, must it not move while it is at rest ? It 
cannot wait until it has motion to move, since it would in that 
case wait forever. It must have motion, then, while it has it 
not, — a contradiction sufficiently glaring. The same is true 
of a body in motion: How can it ever come to rest? It 
cannot be at rest so long as it is moving ; that is, up to, and 
into the point just before that at which it is to rest ; and from 
this, it must move to the next and last. It must carry its 
motion, then, to the very end, and motion and rest again come 
together. The difficulty is the same at any point of its path 
where there is a change of velocity. Since the velocity changes, 
the change must be at some point, and the body must arrive 
at the point with one velocity, and leave it with another ; that 
is, have two velocities at the same time and at the same 
point. 

The infinite variety of forms in which this difficulty of 
thought can be thrown may be seen most thoroughly and 
beautifully in the Dialogues of Plato. I quote a few sentences 
from the " Parmenides " (Jowett), which is taken up with the 
discussion of the 'One and the Many.' 

" Further consider, whether that which is of such a nature can 
have either rest or motion. 

"Why not? 

"Why, because motion is either motion in a place or change 
in self ; these are the only kinds of motion 

" Yes. 

" And the one, when changed in itself, cannot possibly be 
any longer one. 

" It cannot. 

" And therefore cannot experience this sort of motion ? 

" Certainly not. 

" Can the motion of one, then, be in place ? 



THE METAPHYSICAL ATTITUDE OF CHANGE. 285 

" Perhaps. 

" But if one moved in place, must it not either move round 
and round in the same place, or from one place to another? 

" Certainly. 

" And that which moves round and round in the same place 
must go round upon a centre ; and that which goes round upon 
a centre must have other parts which move round the centre ; 
but that which has no centre and no parts cannot possibly be 
carried round upon a centre ? 

" Impossible. 

" But perhaps the motion of the one consists in going from 
one place to another? 

" Perhaps so, if it moves at all. 

" And have we not already shown that one cannot be in any- 
thing ? 

"Yes. 

" And still greater is the impossibility of one coming into 
being in anything? 

" I do not see how that is. 

" Why, because anything which comes into being in anything, 
cannot as yet be in that other thing, while still coming into 
being, nor remain entirely out of it, if already coming into 
being in it. •• 

" Certainly. 

" And, therefore, whatever comes into being in another must 
have parts, and the one part may be in that other, and the 
other part out of it \ but that which has no parts cannot possi- 
bly be at the same time a whole, which is either within or 
without anything." 

This is not a mere juggle of words, as one might be at first 
tempted to declare. It is a difficulty of thought which we 
have so often encountered, and shall be thrown back upon con- 
stantly as we proceed. It is of the same nature as the diffi- 
culty which the physicists find in the construction of matter ; 



286 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

and discovers itself whenever thought attempts to transcend 
the sphere of relation, and deal with the ultimate in any 
direction. 

Granting, what we can neither deny nor explain, that change 
is an actual factor in the economy of nature, the further in- 
quiry arises, How does change come about? The two ques- 
tions are clearly separable : one is of the ' What,' and the 
other is of the ' How.' One thing acts upon another. We 
see the change which takes place, and, passing the question as 
to what the essential difference is between the new and old 
order of states or conditions, we want to know now in what way 
one thing acts upon another to produce the new. This is the 
problem of ' cause,' of which we have already had somewhat to 
say, but which requires some further consideration. We shall 
follow Lotze in our outline. 

In the first place, the proposition, Everything has a cause, is 
not quite correct. In mathematical truth we do not seek a 
cause. When we say a triangle has three sides, we can give no 
reason, and we do not look for any. Neither do we look for 
cause in the actual, so long as it simply abides. It is only 
when change takes place, or is conceived to be happening, that 
we want to know the reason. " The ' Being ' of an existence 
can in itself be regarded as perfectly unconditioned and eter- 
nal. It is only the special nature of what exists that can, on 
manifold other grounds, excite a doubt respecting its uncon- 
ditioned existence and inquiry after its origin. Even such an 
investigation, however, must terminate in the recognition of 
some unconditioned being or other." 

In an effect, we may distinguish the content and the actual- 
ization. The ' content ' is that which distinguishes the event 
from other events, as when a spark is applied to gunpowder, 
the effect is known to be an explosion instead of (say) a change 
of color or a change of substance. The ' actualization ' is the 
happening or act of changing without regard to the particular 



THE METAPHYSICAL ATTITUDE OF CHANGE. 287 

result after the change is complete. The difficulty lies chiefly 
in the actualization ; how does one thing act on another ? 

The common answer is that an ' influence . . . passes over ' 
from one element to the other {causa transzens, influxus phy- 
sicus), and produces the effect. This seems to have a mean- 
ing at first look, but upon examination it will be found quite 
empty. 

In the first place, what is it that passes over ? If we think 
of it as something real, — a constituent part or element, c, 
which separates itself from A, and, moving over, unites with B, 
this is quite comprehensible as a fact, but it is not what is 
meant by ' cause ' in any right sense. It is but the translation 
in detail of A to, or into, B. " When water (V), for example, 
with all its properties passes over from A to B, the only effect 
is that those properties now appear at the place B (which 
becomes moist), and vanish at the place A (which dries off)." 

The only other way in which we can regard this passing over 
is that something not real, but belonging to A as a potency, 
attribute, or condition, shall proceed out of the thing which 
affects, to the thing affected ; but such a potency, whether it 
be called ' state,' ' influence,' '• efficiency,' ' force,' or what not, 
so long as it is not a part or constituent of A, is but an attri- 
bute and cannot exist apart from, and independent of, its sub- 
ject. A 'state ' and the like can never be set loose from the 
' thing ' A so as to exist by itself for an instant between A and 
B, unsupported by a subject, and then attach itself to B. In 
other words, there is a gulf fixed between cause and effect, 
narrow as it may seem, across which no mere force or influence 
— nothing — can pass which is not itself ' thing ' ; and if it 
be ' thing ' we have a mere translation, and no true effect. 

But even if it could be made comprehensible how this gulf 
could be passed, this would but bring the compelling power 
near to, or against, the thing to be moved ; and the real ques- 
tion then emerges, Why is the vicinity of this something to the 



288 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

thing to be moved of such importance to it that it must move ? 
That is, What causes the thing B to move ? We have not really 
advanced a step. The causal nexus is as entirely undiscover- 
able as at the first. 

This is a point which most minds do not apprehend readily. 
Let us take an illustration. 

A push or pull on a rod is communicated from one end to 
the other. The molecular springs in the first film moved react 
upon those of the next, and so on to the end. Now it is easy 
enough to say that the second and consecutive films must 
move, but this is just the question : Why must they move ? If 
one says, " Because they must," the answer is safe, and in reality 
there is no other to make ; but this is a surrender of the point. 
It is not at all like a conclusion which follows apodictically 
from logical premises, for there the contradictory is unthink- 
able. In this case it is not at all so. Here the conclusion is 
clearly based upon experience. If one body, in impinging upon 
another, had not constantly produced before our eyes this 
resultant change in the body struck, there would be no expec- 
tation of a change in consequence of the collision ; and as it is, 
we can without difficulty conceive of such a sudden alteration 
in the physical character of bodies that no such result would 
take place. That we cannot do in the case of a necessary 
deduction in a logical process, unless we conceive of a change, 
not in the subject-matter but in the powers of thinking. There 
is thus a manifest difference. 

All this has been so clearly seen by the great thinkers of the 
world that a number of schemes have been proposed to escape 
the difficulty. Let us look at some of them very briefly. 

First, the Cartesian doctrine of Occasionalism, as developed 
especially by Guelincx, had for its especial object to explain 
how mind and matter act and react upon each other under the 
dualistic postulate of Descartes, that mind and matter are 
totally unlike, — as much so as if they belonged to wholly 



THE METAPHYSICAL ATTITUDE OF CHANGE. 289 

different worlds. It proposed to abandon all thought of the 
direct action of one thing on another, and to consider the 
world, in its succession of events, as utterly unconnected by 
any causal nexus, holding all antecedent states or conditions 
to be but the occasions or signals upon which the effects follow ; 
the true compelling cause residing in Deity. 

Manifestly the difficulty is not thus removed, but recurs in a 
new form, weighted down with other difficulties of its own. 
The question now is, How does the thing affected faiow, and 
how is it made to respond to, the signal given ? The answer 
is as impossible as in the case of a supposed influence ' passing 
over.' Its own difficulties are that it is contrary to the convic- 
tions of experience, and introduces all manner of unrealities 
for what at least seems natural. 

A second theory is what is known as ' Pre-established Har- 
mony.' This theory, invented by Leibnitz, assumes that the 
entire world, spiritual and physical, down to the minutest 
details, was pre-arranged by the Author of Creation, so that each 
and every event follows its precedent so-called cause with un- 
failing certainty — not because there is any dependence one 
on the other, but because they were so arranged as to happen 
in an established sequence. Thus, when one wills to raise 
one's arm, the muscles and the whole physical organism are 
moved, not by the will or any self-energy, but because it was 
so ordered that upon the particular volition happening, that 
particular movement should take place. 

Even granting that the world was so ordered in the begin- 
ning, when God withdraws himself from his work, what guar- 
antee is there that the order so established will continue to 
subsist ? If one thing does not act upon another, what would 
prevent the whole from falling into confusion ; and how do 
we know that the world is going on as pre-arranged ? It will 
be seen that the difficulty is not in the least avoided, but 
really made worse. There must be something constraining 



29O MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

and compelling the orderly continuance of events, and this is 
the old question back again, with its own difficulties added. 
The famous illustration of the clocks, so constructed as to run 
exactly together, but without any possible connection or influ- 
ence on each other, does not meet the case ; for after the 
clocks are made and placed in perfect accord of movement, 
how shall either of them continue to carry out the purpose of 
the mechanician, if one wheel does not act upon and compel 
the movement of another? Thus the old difficulty steals back 
upon us. 

Another form of the same theory presents the case, not as a 
fixed and previously determined order, but introduces a hypo- 
thetical element ; God has not ordered all things absolutely in 
advance, but has established a provisional order, such that if 
a certain a comes to pass, a certain b will follow. This theory 
fails in the same manner as the categorical form just consid- 
ered ; for if a certain ' thing,' n, is compelled to pass into a 
certain state or condition, a, whenever another state or condi- 
tion, b, happens to a second thing, m, then the n must take 
some notice of m's being present, and affected by b, before it 
can pass into the state a. The notion of causation is not 
escaped, since either m or b must have an effect upon n. 

Still another form of the same general doctrine devised by 
the followers of Descartes, is called the theory of ' Divine 
Assistance ' ; and the especial point is, that while one thing 
cannot be the efficient cause of another, God by his own power 
compels the proper reaction which answers to the action. 
Even this theory does not get rid of the notion of causation, 
but contains it twice over. For, in order that God, in the 
light of our thought, may attach to every a its b, and to every 
c its d, it is necessary, first, that the presence of a or c shall 
have some effect on the Divine mind, and that the effect of 
one shall be different from that of the other ; and second, it 
is necessary that God, in the order of his own laws, shall react 



THE METAPHYSICAL ATTITUDE OF CHANGE. 2C)I 

upon the things in question ; and so produce one effect in con- 
sequence of a, and another in response to b. 

Lotze says, in summing up the results of the discussion of 
cause : " The conception of efficient Causation is inevitable for 
our apprehension of the World, and all attempts to deny the 
necessity of efficient Causation, and then still comprehend the 
course of the World, make shipwreck of themselves. But just 
as certain is it that the nature of efficient Causation is inex- 
plicable ; that is to say, it can never be shown in what way 
Causation in general is produced or comes to pass ; on the con- 
trary, all that can ever be shown is, what preparatory condi- 
tions, what relations between the real beings, must in every 
case be given, in order that this perpetually incomprehensible 
act of Causation may take place. 

"That the inquiry into the ' bringing- to-pass ' of efficient 
Causation is necessarily unanswerable, and in its very nature 
senseless, is shown by the circulus into which it straightway 
leads. For, if we want to get an insight into the causative 
process of Causation itself, we naturally take for granted, as 
something necessarily familiar, the causal efficiency of that 
very cause which is assumed to produce the Causation to be 
explained ; we are therefore explaining efficient Causation by 
itself." 

This does not in any wise affect our general conception of 
causation, and we must go on thinking of force or influence 
' passing over ' from one thing to another to produce effects. 
In this regard, causation is in no worse case than matter or 
mind, since we do not know what either mind or matter is. 
They are to us concepts, the actual content of which vary no 
doubt considerably for different persons. 

It seems clear, however, that the assumption of independence 
or absolute separateness of ' things ' must be abandoned. All 
efforts to bring isolated things into relation, once assuming 
them to be out, must utterly fail. In the case of a being a, 



292 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

affecting another, b, any state a which takes place in a, must 
for the very reason that it is in a be an ' affection ' in b ; but it 
does not necessarily become such an affection of b by means of 
an influence issuing from a. 

" The foregoing requirements can be met only by the assump- 
tion that all individual things are substantially one j that is to 
say, they do not merely become combined subsequently by all 
manner of relations, each individual having previously been 
present as an independent existence ; but from the very begin- 
ning onward they are only different modifications of one indi- 
vidual Being, which we propose to designate provisionally by 
the title of the Infinite, of the Absolute = M." 

The formal consequences of this assumption, Lotze goes on 
to say in substance, are as follows : Any particular ' thing,' a, is 
but a special mode of the universal M, and any other definite 
thing, b, is another mode of M, etc. Every state which takes 
place in a is but a further differentiation of the #-mode of M 
and is therefore a state of M. From the nature of its own 
laws this modification must show itself in M, and it accordingly 
produces a further differentiation in some mode of M, say the 
^-mode. This modification thus appearing in b, seems to be 
and is the same thing as a acting on b. 

Efficient Causation, therefore, is a necessary concept, and 
has no actual content ; but, in an ultimate sense it is the 
Absolute itself; and the actuality is the result of self-activity 
somehow and somewhere. We can say one thing really acts 
upon another, provided we do not interpret the word ' really ' 
to mean more than the word ' real ' can mean when we say a 
' thing' is real. We find here, as we have found before, and 
shall always find, that the ultimate in any case is known ; but 
not by the understanding in its technical sense which always 
implies the relation of subject and predicate ; but by that form 
of knowing which comes to us at first hand in the form of 
rational intuitions, and without which the understanding could 



THE METAPHYSICAL ATTITUDE OF CHANGE. 293 

have no ground. In referring it back to the One Infinite 
Being, the purpose is not to offer any theory of explanation of 
causation, as such ; since ' the manner ' in which it comes to 
pass, that even within the One Infinite Being, one state brings 
about another, remains still wholly unexplained ; and on this 
point we must not deceive ourselves. How it is in general that 
' Causal action ' is produced, is as impossible to tell as how 
' Being ' is made. And yet, as a primordial fact, we know it 
certainly and in the same way as we know that we are what 
we are. 



294 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

RELATION OF PERSONALITY TO SPACE AND TIME, MASS AND 
MOTION. 

The concepts ' Space ' and ' Time.' Subjective ground of Mass and 
Motion. Not self-subsisting realities. Find their reality in Personality. 
Reality of the cosmos personal. Soundness of scientific methods. No 
truth material. Personality necessary to truth. Personality not a phe- 
nomenon. 

IT is not to be questioned that we have a necessary intuition of 
space, but it is seriously questioned as to whether space is an 
objective entity or not ; that is, as to whether it belongs to the 
thing-world, or to the spirit-world. It can make small claim to 
be 'thing,' since it is incapable of affecting the sensibilities, or 
of being itself affected by anything whatever. The necessary 
condition of pure space is that it shall be empty, and therefore 
no-thing. It cannot even be permitted to enjoy the property 
or capacity of being a containing somewhat, though this is a 
firmly established prejudice, arising from our uniform experience 
of vessels, and other receptacles, for, upon removing the limiting 
surfaces, the notion falls away. This, however, does not at all 
affect our notion of distances from point to point in bodies, or 
between bodies, that is, of the trinal dimensions of extension ; 
but these are clearly relations, and not entities. All possible 
objects must carry with them the notion of extension ; so that 
the space-form must discover itself in any object. Whenever 
we think of air, or ether, or aught else of a dimensional char- 
acter, we must have the notion of space ; and there will always 
be lurking in the mind some ' thing ' in the content of the space- 
concept. We cannot think of space as a prius, existing inde- 



RELATION OF PERSONALITY TO SPACE, ETC. 295 

pendently, and of things as afterwards made to fill it. As 
Lotze expresses it, things do not exist in space, but space 
exists in things. 

In like way time has none of the characteristics of body, but 
is a presupposition of movement and change. Of eventless, 
empty time we can form no conception whatever ; but just as 
body carries with it the necessary notion of extension, so move- 
ment carries with it the intuition of duration. Space is statical ; 
time dynamical. Space is the ground and presupposition of 
mass, and time the condition and presupposition of motion, — 
the two fundamental postulates of mechanics, — and they both 
belong to the psychical side of personality. 

With regard to Motion, we have the same sort of difficulties. 
What is Motion ? An old Greek, it is said, was once asked this 
question by his scholars ; he strode across the floor, and ex- 
claimed, " There ! you see it, but what it is I do not know." He 
was in no worse case than all the learned world has been in 
ever since. Ordinarily we accept what the old philosopher 
displayed to his scholars as motion, namely, ' change of place,' 
with respect to other things which appear fixed — ' relative 
motion.' This is comprehensible enough until we begin to 
ask what a fixed point is, and then we are thrown back upon 
the negation of motion for an answer. The circle is narrow 
enough — a point at rest is one not in motion; a point in 
motion is one not at rest ; but this does not tell us what rest 
is, nor what motion is. The question is not, what is a moving 
object? but what is motion which we are made conscious of 
in the object? If it be replied that motion is only object 
in motion, then it follows that there is no such thing as motion 
perse ; because it is not, when the object is at rest, and is in 
varying degrees as the body moves under an accelerating 
energy, gaining motion at every point, losing it under a retar- 
dation, until all is lost, and it is again at rest. It is thus a 
quality, a state, a condition, a phenomenon of body, but in- 



296 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

capable of independent, self-subsisting existence. One but 
deludes oneself in thinking that one has any conception 
of motion, except as a somewhat moving. It is, therefore, 
incapacitated from taking rank in thought as an eternal, self- 
subsisting reality in its own right. 

Of Mass, we have seen all along in speaking of it, that it 
finds its essence in pure resistance, i.e. inertia. But resistance 
is a negation, and from this fact alone, if from no other, Mass 
is also disqualified for an independent, self-subsisting existence. 
And yet it is the one, and the only one, ultimate property or 
potency of matter. Helmholtz's and Thompson's ' perfect 
fluid ' must have it, and so also Le Sage's ' ultra-mundane cor- 
puscules ' ; but to have it, is a very different thing from to be it. 

Mass and motion thus having no right to an independent, 
self-subsisting existence, it follows that mechanics, and with it 
the whole round of science, is compelled to find its ultimate 
ground in the psychical side of personality. This is in no wise 
to discredit science, or its methods ; and it is only just to say 
that the leaders of science clearly see, and freely admit, the 
position. As Professor Huxley points out, physical science must 
recognize its obligations to metaphysic, and metaphysic, on the 
Other hand, has no right — indeed has no power to speak intel- 
ligently except in the fullest recognition of the province and 
functions of physical research. These two phases of reality 
stand towards each other much as the mechanical and psychi- 
cal factors stand toward each other in personality, — neither 
being able to dispense with the other, though the psychical 
mode claims, and must always be granted to have, the domi- 
nance. Perhaps the radical mistake which lies at the bottom 
of the long-standing antagonism between these two phases of 
thought, is the failure to recognize the fact, that neither the 
mechanical nor the psychical mode of existence can claim any 
exclusive title to reality, — that reality as Thing, and reality as 
Thought, are both equally real, neither of them having this title 



RELATION OF PERSONALITY TO SPACE, ETC. 297 

in their own right, but both actual, as having their ground in 
the One, Infinite, and eternally self-subsisting Personality. 

At the risk of repeating, let us look at this a little further. I 
am not conscious of my bodily existence apart from and inde- 
pendent of my psychical activities, and I am not conscious of 
the psychical side as in any wise independent of my body. I 
can easily emphasize the one or the other, and so, for the mo- 
ment, throw out of account the neglected factor ; but the 
moment I attempt to examine my thought, the whole self 
demands recognition. Thus it is, that neither of these two 
necessary factors can usurp self-ness or personality. They are 
either of them manifestations of ' me,' and by no possibility can 
the ' me ' evacuate in favor of either. I speak of, and must 
speak of my mind, and my body, and so inevitably assume the 
personal subject as the very reality to which they both belong, 
and for and through which they both are real. 

This being true of that which we may be safely assumed to 
know best — body and spirit (spirit being understood as synon- 
ymous with all that goes to make up the psychical factor of the 
self) , and these two factors being necessary, constituent actual- 
ities of the cosmos, the presumption is not violent that what 
is true of a constituent element, is true, as a law, of the whole. 

We can take one step further at least. No one will dispute 
that there are universal truths which are not material, or per- 
haps better stated, that no truth can be material. No one can 
think that the principles of mathematics and logic are what is 
commonly called substance. Further than this, no one can 
deny that the principle of vitality, carrying with it all three of 
the fundamental modes of personality, is exhibited throughout 
Nature. We do, therefore, incontestably see both the mechani- 
cal and spiritual factors everywhere in the cosmos. More than 
this, it is universally conceded that there must be an ultimate 
existent, which is the ground of both these realities. We have, 
therefore, in the cosmos all the conditions present, and it only 



298 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

remains to call this ' Ultimate Existent/ Person, to have the 
Macrocosm of man the Microcosm. 

Again, whether the external world is what it seems to be, or 
whether it is at all, we cannot deny that it at least persists in 
seeming. What is this but to postulate the psychical factor of 
the Existent? Now, if we have to take leave of the one or the 
other of these factors, without doubt we shall have to hold fast 
to the psychical factor, and let the material go. Thus it is that 
we must concede the dominance of the psychical over the 
mechanical mode ; or, if one or the other must be All, we shall 
have to conclude that the All is psychical. 

This is a matter of so much consequence that I venture to 
put it once more in a little different form. We have seen, from 
the look we have had into the reality of ' thing,' that we could 
find no definite, hard, and self-existent 'stuff' out of which the 
world is made ; and that, in the last analysis, even if it be 
assumed, against the trend of science, that there are essential 
and ultimate atoms in the ordinary sense, there must be still 
behind these a power of ' manufacturing ' — of shaping, endow- 
ing, and moving them which presupposes meaning and intelli- 
gence, — that is, Personality. 

But passing this, what ground have we in science to think that 
the two necessary postulates, Mass and Motion, are material? 
Motion we have seen to be a quality or condition, and Inertia 
or Mass, a reaction. Neither can subsist without a ' ground,' 
deeper than itself. Now, if science can find no place for the 
hard, inert, dead stuff, commonly supposed to compose matter, 
in the concept Mass, what possible reason can there be for 
holding it to be the ultimate ' ground ' itself ? And besides, 
any theory of external reality demands ' energy ' to produce 
action ; and the only kind of energy indisputably known to us is 
personal or self-energy. 

Then, is there not better reason for thinking that all action 
and reaction which is comprised in the scientific postulate 
of the ' conservation of energy ' finds its reality in a some- 



RELATION OF PERSONALITY TO SPACE, ETC. 299 

what which we do actually know to be a necessary factor of 
the cosmos, than in a somewhat which we do not know, and 
have much reason to deny a possible existence ? From any one 
of these several points of view, materialism, as commonly 
understood, is impossible ; and it is not therefore surprising 
that no recognized leader of science commits himself to it ; and 
there is no one, perhaps, who would not convict himself of a 
contrary belief if he could be subjected to a cross-examination. 
It may be well to reassure the reader that neither science 
nor metaphysic has any power or purpose to spirit away the 
solid and substantial world he is accustomed to, and substitute in 
its stead some sort of mazy dream-world. Whatever may be 
the conclusions of philosophy, the world will continue to be, 
after all, just what we have all along known it to be — all too 
substantial and hard for some of us. Matter, such as the 
mathematical physicist discovers in ' thing,' and spirit, in the 
metaphysical sense, do not seem to differ ; and if that sort of 
matter is thought- stuff (and must it not be from a materialistic 
point of view?), it must have Personality in or behind it, and 
is thus just what most people have meant all along by spirit. 
But the difference is world-wide, if the wrong end is fixed upon 
as the flrius, and Personality made but an attribute or phenom- 
enon of either matter or spirit. So long as it is recognized 
that Personality is the primordial reality, to which the real in 
any form or manifestation whatever must look for its ' being ' 
or meaning, no harm would result from a change of names, 
however impossible of accomplishment. The thought-world 
and the material world, as we know them, would remain un- 
changed and we should simply have the cosmos as it is. The 
important point is not to fall into the error of assuming Per- 
sonality to be but a quality, an attribute or a product of the cos- 
mos. That it cannot be so may be put syllogistically, thus : An 
attribute or phenomenon cannot be conceived of as doing, know- 
ing, or feeling anything whatever, but Personality acts, knows, 
and feels ; therefore Personality cannot be a phenomenon. 



300 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

SOME OF THE GREAT METAPHYSICAL SYSTEMS. 

Idealism. Fichte. Lotze quoted. Schelling. Hegelianism. Hegel 
quoted. Objections to Absolute Idealism. Lotze's position commended. 
The Supreme Good. 

IT is possible, and the attempt has been made in different 
forms, to consider all things and events to be but the sub- 
jective modes or habits of the self, — holding that 'a non- 
existent world ' is simply mirrored before us. This is - Subjec- 
tive Idealism,' and in modern times has Johann Gottlieb Fichte 
for its father. 

Stated in this naked way, it seems absurd enough ; but un- 
satisfactory as it is, one who is at the pains to understand the 
good and great Fichte will have small room for contempt. 
Lewes, an avowed empiricist, and therefore quite out of sym- 
pathy with the whole school of transcendental philosophy, says, 
in his " History of Philosophy " : " Let us at the outset request 
the reader to give no heed to any of the witticisms he may hear, 
or which may suggest themselves to him on a hasty considera- 
tion of Fichte's opinions. That the opinions are not those of 
ordinary thinkers, we admit ; that they are repugnant to all 
' common sense,' we must also admit ; that they are false, we 
believe : but we also believe them to have been laborious 
products of an earnest mind, the consequences of admitted 
premises, drawn with singular audacity and subtlety, and no 
mere caprices of ingenious speculation, — no paradoxes of an 
acute but trifling mind." 

It has been remarked that Fichte's system is one absolutely 



SOME OF THE GREAT METAPHYSICAL SYSTEMS. 301 

refusing to be compressed with intelligibility, and he must be 
an uncommon man who can confidently affirm that he has fully 
mastered it. The whole of ' Speculative Philosophy ' in mod- 
ern times finds its starting-point in Descartes. Decidedly the 
most important epoch after Descartes is found in the Critical 
Philosophy of Kant ; but Kant's work was in the beginning, and 
remained substantially just what he calls it, Critical. He did not 
attempt to erect his philosophy into a system. He did much 
to make clear the transcendental, or non-empirical factor in 
cognition, and to point out the conditions under which rational 
thinking is possible ; but these conditions were established, not 
from the nature of the ego itself, but rather from empirical 
sources. He did not let go a firm belief in a real objective 
content in our knowledge of the external world ; that is, he 
always held that the material world exists independently of any 
mode or state of the ego. But yet he opened wide the door to 
Idealism, and Fichte was not slow to enter. The ' thing- in- 
itself,' which in his philosophy supports the phenomena of all 
bodies, he holds to be inconceivable ; and essential matter is 
left without anything by which it can be identified with gross 
matter. The step is not a long one to the denial of all objec- 
tive reality ; and Fichte was greatly surprised that his master 
should not only not receive his proposed contribution with favor, 
but reject it with small ceremony. 

Fichte declared that Kant had prepared the way and the 
materials for a philosophy ; they needed systematizing and co- 
ordinating, and this was the task he set himself in his " Theory 
of Science " ( Wissenschaftslehre) . It would be out of place to 
attempt any analysis of his method. We must content our- 
selves with a word as to the general result. He begins with 
the individual ego, but as he goes on, he develops the fact that 
the real basis of his system is the Absolute Ego : from the Ab- 
solute Ego (God) spring all the individual egos. God is the 
Infinite Energy, — the Infinite Thinker, — who becomes con- 



302 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

scious of Himself by self-diremption into individual egos. The 
Individual ego knows itself by the reaction of the non-ego, 
which is itself but a self-limitation of the Absolute Ego. The 
paramount principle over all is the Will. 

It is confessed on all hands that the theory of ' Subjective 
Idealism,' though it may not be true, is impossible of successful 
refutation. Whatever may be the nature of that which pro- 
duces cognition in the self, we know it only through such cog- 
nition ; and resist as we may, cognition is the sole witness, and 
we cannot get beyond it. 

Lotze says : " The demonstration of the ' thorough-going sub- 
jectivity of all the elements of our cognition,' — sensations, pure 
intuitions, and pure notions of the understanding, — Is in no 
respect decisive against the assumption of the existence of 
' a world of things outside ourselves.' For it is clear that this 
' subjectivity of cognition' must in any case be true, whether 
1 Things ' do or do not exist. For even if ' Things ' exist, still 
our cognition of them cannot consist in their actually finding 
an entrance into us, but only in their exerting an action upon 
us. But the products of this action, as affections of our being, 
can receive their form from our nature alone. And, as it is 
easy to persuade ourselves, even in the case ' Things ' do actu- 
ally exist, all parts of our cognition will have the very same 
' subjectivity ' as that from which it might be hastily concluded 
that 'Things ' do not exist. 

" The assertion that the World is the creation of his own 
energy in his imagination could not possibly be accomplished 
with complete freedom from obscurity by any one except some 
lone individual indulging in philosophic speculation. Since it 
is quite too absurd that this one person deemed the remaining 
spirits, too, in whose society he is conscious of living, as merely 
products of his own fantasy ; and since rather the same kind 
of reality for all spirits, at least, must be credited, therefore the 
question arises : How do these individual spirits, A, B, C, D, . . . 



SOME OF THE GREAT METAPHYSICAL SYSTEMS. 303 

come to produce, by means of their faculties of imagination, 
four (or, if the case require it, 11) pictures of the world, which 
have as a whole the same content, but which so vary in their 
particular features, that the other spirits, B, C, D, . . . appear 
to A at definite places, and A in turn to them at another place ; 
in brief, that all appear to each other in such manner as to 
make it possible for one to seek for and to meet with the others, 
for the sake of a mutual action in this non-existent phantom 
world?" 

In the hands of Schelling, Fichte's Idealism undergoes cer- 
tain transformations. The ' object ' with Fichte had reality, it is 
true, but it depended entirely upon the Absolute Will ; the 
non-ego was the product of the ego, and so had no content 
in itself. Schelling identifies subject and object, and gives us 
what is called Objective Idealism. " Nature is spirit visible ; 
spirit is invisible nature." Schwegler epitomizes the earlier 
views of Schelling as follows : " The first origin of the concep- 
tion of matter springs from nature and the intuition of the 
human mind. The mind is the union of an unlimited and lim- 
iting energy. If there were no limit to the mind, consciousness 
would be just as impossible as if the mind were totally and 
absolutely limited. Feeling, perception, and knowledge are only 
conceivable as the energy which strives for the unlimited be- 
comes limited through its opposite, and as this latter becomes 
itself freed from its limitations. The actual mind or heart con- 
sists only in the antagonism of these two energies, and hence 
only in their ever approximate or relative unity. Just so it 
is in nature. Matter as such is not the first, for the forces of 
which it is the unity are before it. Matter is only to be appre- 
hended as the ever-becoming product of attraction and repul- 
sion ; it is not, therefore, a mere inert grossness, as we are apt 
to represent it, but these forces are its original. But force in 
the material is like something immaterial. Force in nature is 
that which we may compare to mind. Since now the mind or 



304 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

heart exhibits precisely the same conflict, as matter, of oppo- 
site forces, we must unite the two in a higher identity. But 
the organ of the mind for apprehending nature is the intuition 
which takes, as object of the external sense, the space which 
has been filled and limited by the attracting and repelling 
forces. Thus Schelling was led to the conclusion that the same 
absolute appears in nature as in mind, and that the harmony of 
these is something more than a thought in reference to them. 
. . . The world is the actual unity of a positive and a nega- 
tive principle, ' and these two conflicting forces taken together 
or separated in their conflict, lead to the idea of an organizing 
principle which makes the world a system, in other worlds, to 
the idea of a world-soul.' " 

Without attempting to follow Schelling in the development 
of his subtle and elaborate system, we have only to say that he 
seems to have lost himself at last in the mazes of mysticism. 
His earlier position, while not free from difficulties (can any 
system be?), was stronger, and doubtless nearer the truth. His 
latest enunciations, after a long period of silence, were con- 
fused and strongly pantheistic. 

We are quite conscious of the fact that pantheism is a charge 
easily made, and that any system is in some sort open to it. 
There is a right pantheism, and a wrong. So long as Person- 
ality is clear and conspicuous, no system can be offensively 
pantheistic. It becomes so when this primordial fact is lost 
or confused, — when the world comes to be what it appeared 
to Professor Teufelsdrockh at that great crisis in his life, when 
he declares : " To me the Universe was void of all Life, of Pur- 
pose, of Volition, even of Hostility : it was one huge, dead, 
immeasurable Steam-Engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, 
to grind me limb from limb. O the vast, gloomy, solitary Gol- 
gotha, and Mill of Death ! Why was the Living banished 
thither, companionless, conscious?" 

The system of 'Absolute Idealism' (Hegel) has perhaps 



SOME OF THE GREAT METAPHYSICAL SYSTEMS. 305 

made most stir in the world. Schelling and Hegel began their 
work together, or more accurately, Schelling, who had some 
years the start, extended a hand to the younger philosopher, 
and accepted him as his coadjutor and peer. They parted 
company after a time, the younger soaring on to a brilliant 
height, the elder suffering a partial eclipse. 

The system of Hegel is simply astounding in its logical 
astuteness and obscurity. Nobody presumes to question, or 
understand, its philosophic sweep. It has come to be an 
accepted pleasantry that it is unanswerable, because nobody 
dare say he fully comprehends it. The master himself put an 
estoppel on his disciples when he declared : " One man has 
understood me, and he has not." How then shall any who is 
not a disciple dare presume ? 

But, understood or not, Hegelianism has deservedly exerted 
a powerful influence upon the thought of the world. It is now 
no longer a school in Germany; in England and America, 
efforts partially successful have rehabilitated it in a manner; 
but if we may rely upon such an ardent defender as Dr. William 
Wallace, " few if any profess to accept the system in its in- 
tegrity." 

The differences between Schelling and Hegel are serious 
enough, from a philosophical point of view, but can only be 
appreciated by those who have already gained a considerable 
insight into the systems of the two philosophers, while they 
both owe their groundwork, and much of their superstructure, 
to Fichte. 

Hegel starts with ' Being,' which in its want of content is 
utter emptiness or nothing. These two concepts are, at the 
same time, absolutely identical and absolutely contradictory — 
either losing itself in the other. But perhaps the reader will 
like a plunge of half a minute into the philosopher's own phra- 
seology. He says, in the " Logic " : "If we enunciate Being as 
the predicate of the Absolute, we get the first definition of the 



306 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

latter. The Absolute is Being. So far as thought goes, this 
is the initial definition, the most abstract and sterile, . . . 
But this mere Being, as it is mere Abstraction, is therefore 
absolutely negative ; which, in a similarly immediate aspect is 
just what may be said of nothing. Hence we derive the 
second definition of the Absolute ; the Absolute is the naught. 
. . . Nothing, which is thus immediate and identical with 
itself, is conversely the same as Being is. The truth of Being 
and of Nothing is accordingly the unity of the two ; and this 
unity is Becoming." 

The philosopher fully appreciated the opening he gave for 
ridicule. He says : " The proposition that Being is the same 
as Nothing seems so paradoxical to the imagination or under- 
standing that it is perhaps taken as a joke. ... It is as cor- 
rect, however, to say that Being and Nothing are altogether 
different, as to assert their unity; the one is not what the 
other is." 

" In Becoming, the Being which is one with Nothing, and the 
Nothing which is one with Being, are only vanishing factors ; 
they are, and they are not. Thus by its inherent contradiction 
Becoming collapses ; or is precipitated into the unity, in which 
the two elements are entirely lost to view. This result is 
accordingly Being determinate, or definite. ... To Being, 
therefore, in this stage is attached a determinateness (a certain 
cognizability) which, as it is immediate and said to be, is Qual- 
ity. And as reflected into itself in being so determined, the 
determinate Being is Somewhat, in being there and then. . . . 
Quality, as determinateness which is, as contrasted with the 
Negation which is involved in it, but distinct from it, is Reality. 
Negation, which is no longer an abstract nothing, but Somewhat 
which is-there-and-then, becomes a mere form to Being — it is 
Being other than some-Being. This Other-Being, though a 
determination of Quality itself, is in the first instance distinct 
from it. Quality is Being-for- Another — one width, as it were, 



SOME OF THE GREAT METAPHYSICAL SYSTEMS. 307 

of Determinate Being, or of Somewhat. The Being of Quality, 
as such, contrasted with this reference connecting it with another, 
is Being-by-Self." 

This will doubtless be enough for most readers. It is not 
jargon, as some may be inclined to think, but every sentence 
above is full of solid truth. Its form, however, is so uncouth, 
or at least, so out of the run of common phraseology, that the 
meaning is not obvious at first glance. 

With Fichte the ego devours the non-ego — all is subject ; 
with Schelling the ego and the non-ego both subsist, and their 
identity is indifference ; but with Hegel the relation between 
the two forms the basis of all truth. The discovery of relation 
is the province of thought, and so he resolves the Universe into 
Thought, and his Metaphysic is Logic. Everything is rational, 
and everything rational is actual. Schwegler epitomizes his 
position as follows : " The ' idea ' is the highest logical definition 
of the Absolute. The immediate existence of the idea we call 
life, or the process of life. Everything living is self- end, immi- 
nent-end. The ' idea ' posited in its difference as a relation of 
objective and subjective is the true and good. The true is the 
objective rationality subjectively posited ; the good is the sub- 
jective rationality carried into objectivity. Both conceptions 
together constitute the Absolute idea, which is just as truly as 
it should be, i.e. the good is just so truly actualized as the true 
is living and self-realizing. The absolute and full idea is in 
space, because it discharges itself from itself as its reflection ; 
this its being in space is Nature." 

A true Hegelian is apt to look with a certain degree of intel- 
lectual compassion upon any who, pretending to think at all, 
do not embrace the Hegelian system in its fulness. Whatever 
is true, no matter if it be as old as Parmenides and Heraclitus 
(to whom Hegel freely acknowledges his obligations), they 
seem to insist upon seizing to the behoof of their Master. 



308 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

There was philosophy before Hegel, great as he undoubtedly 
was, and his system does not close the circle of thought. 

Serious objections are urged against the system. In the 
first place, with regard to method : he, beyond all the Ideal- 
ists, starts with the most ' abstract and sterile ' concept — the 
Absolute which he defines as Being or Naught — and from this, 
without break, he professes to deduce the World ; which must, 
of course, include ' Thought ' in which all things find reality. 
Does he do it ? Does he not rather drop down into the known 
world at every point to get material with which to build his 
Logical Palace? 

With regard to his famous ' Dialectic,' the instrument he 
uses in constructing his giddy heights, he is clearly entitled to 
a caveat in modern times. It consists, in a word, of the play 
between Being and Naught. Before a thing can be known, 
it must be ' othered,' or pass out of itself into negation, and 
from it return as posited or known : thus contradiction is abso- 
lutely necessary to the knowledge of anything. 

In the second place, he uses ' thought ' in a non-natural and 
misleading sense — else Thought and Being cannot be identical. 
Thinking is an activity ; it is a mode, and never can be ' thing.' 
It is essentially dynamic, and presupposes a subject. Thought 
does not think. The thinker only thinks, and the content of 
thought is like and unlike — relation. The claim is made, 
aud it may be quite just, that in the Hegelian system " thought 
regarded as the basis of all existence is not consciousness with 
its distinction of ego and non-ego " ; that " it is rather the stuff 
of which both mind and nature are made, neither extended as 
in the natural world, nor self-centred as in the mind " ; but if 
this be true, it is unfair to call such an entity thought, since it 
differs as wide as the poles from the notion the world has, and 
is sure to retain, of thought and thinking. 

Another, and the most serious objection, is that it mutilates 
Personality. Thought, in any way it may be construed, is not 



SOME OF THE GREAT METAPHYSICAL SYSTEMS. 309 

Person ; the self is a thinker, but this activity is but one mode 
of the self : the self is also energy or will, which is distinct from 
thought \ and it is Feeling, which cannot be confounded with 
either : and no system can embrace the whole truth which 
leaves out of account, or which only smuggles in, Personality. 

Again, the system of Hegel attempts to do what we regard 
as unphilosophical and impossible. Instead of confining him- 
self to the actual world as discoverable in the Universe as it is, 
he attempts to transcend the domain of all actual knowledge, 
and establish laws which must have governed the develop- 
ment of the cosmos, or which the Creator must have followed 
in his own creation ; and after he has his Logic-world, the 
Creator has no proper part or function in it. He is at last an 
abstraction, — the naught. 

Goethe says, somewhere, Man is not born to solve the mys- 
teries of existence, but he must, nevertheless, attempt it, in 
order that he may learn to keep within the limits of the know- 
able. The problem of how to construct a World is not pro- 
posed for our solution, and is inconsequent and presumptuous. 
We must recognize the fact that the world is a revelation to us, 
as we are a revelation to ourselves. We must accept what, by 
the conditions of our being, is forced upon us ; and although 
we may take upon our lips great swelling words of doubt and 
denial, march against high heaven, and assault it by logic or by 
hate, we but strut and vapor in an idle show, and return at last 
to that which is given us in the world as it appears to us through 
the self. 

Philosophically, we take our stand humbly by the side of the 
gentle, full-souled Lotze. He says : " If things exist and events 
happen simply in order that the formal relations of Identity 
and Opposition, Unity and Multiplicity, Indifference and Polar- 
ity, of Universal, Particular, and Singular, etc., may be actualized 
in the most manifold manner possible, and set forth in Phe- 
nomena ; then, of course, the essence of ' Things ' is so pitiful 



3IO MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

and insignificant that our thinking succeeds perfectly well in 
adequately comprehending it. 

" The teaching of Fichte had been different. The problem 
of Spirit, he held, does not lie in the cognition of a blind Being 
(the conception of which appeared to him as impossible as it 
appears to us), but in action. The aforesaid world is not, but 
appears to us in order to serve as material for our duty, as 
inducement or object of our action." 

For the ' action ' of Fichte, Lotze proposes to substitute the 
Good — for which ' action ' is simply the indispensable form 
of actualization ; in which supreme concept is included the 
' Beautiful,' the 'True,' and all blessedness — uniting into one 
complex whole all that has Value. " And now," he says, " we 
affirm : Genuine Reality in the World (to wit, in the sense that 
all else is, in relation to It, subordinate, deduced, mere sem- 
blance or means to an end) consists alone in this Highest Good 
personal, which is at the same time the Highest Good Thing. 
But since all the Value of what is valuable has existence only in 
the Spirit that enjoys it, therefore, all apparent actuality is only 
a system of contrivances, by means of which this determinate 
world of phenomena, as well as these determinate Metaphysical 
habitudes for considering the world of phenomena, are called 
forth, in order that the aforesaid Highest Good may become 
for the Spirit an object of enjoyment in all the multiplicity of 
forms possible to it. 

" The objectivity of our cognition consists, therefore, in this, 
that it is not a meaningless play of mere seeming ; but it brings 
before us a World whose coherency is ordered in pursuance of 
the injunction of the Sole Reality of the World, to wit, of the 
Good. Our cognition thus possesses more of truth than if it 
copied exactly a world of objects which has no value in itself. 
Although it does not comprehend in what manner all that is. 
phenomenon is presented to its view, still it understands what 
is the meaning of it all ; and is like to a spectator who compre- 



SOME OF THE GREAT METAPHYSICAL SYSTEMS. 3 1 I 

hends the esthetic significance of that which takes place on the 
stage of a theatre, and would gain nothing essential if he were 
to see besides the machinery by means of which the changes 
are effected on the stage." 

It is impossible that there shall not constantly arise in our 
minds a demand to know more of the Good (only another, if 
another, name for God) than can ever meet with adequate 
response. We cannot but ask, in some inarticulate way, even 
when we know that the answer cannot be given except in terms 
which degrade the Ultimate, in the very act, from its awe- 
inspiring reserve, Where is it ? How is it ? What is it ? And 
it is doubtless because the answers given only too readily by 
certain classes of Theologians — who, somehow the world seems 
to think, ought to know — have been so definite and exact in 
' words without knowledge/ and which men in our day have 
come to recognize as narrow and inadequate, that so many 
deprecate the notion of personal existence in the Infinite, and 
attempt to find more satisfying forms of such existence in ideas 
of an Eternal World- Order, an Infinite Substance, or a Self- 
developing Idea. 

We must allow ourselves a few words from the " Microcos- 
mos " touching at least one of these proposed substitutes : "What 
noble motives and what moral earnestness may lead to the dis- 
solving of the Divine Being in that of a Moral World-Order, as 
contrasted with crude anthropomorphism, must be still fresh in 
men's remembrance. And yet Fichte was not right when, with 
inspired words, he opposed his own sublime conception to the 
common, narrow-minded idea of a Personal God • because he 
sought that which was most sublime, he thought that he had 
found it in the conception which he reached ; if he had fol- 
lowed out to the end the path which he took, he would have 
recognized that by it that which he sought could not be 
reached. The question, How is it that a World-Order can be 
conceived as the Supreme Principle? cannot be put off by 



312 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

appealing to the fact that we cannot demand a history of the 
origin of the Principle itself; he who, regarding Personality as 
an impossible conception of the Godhead, prefers some other 
to it, will at least have to show that the one which he brings 
forward is not contradictory; for nothing will be gained by 
substituting for an impossibility some other assumption of which 
the possibility is not proved. Now the fact is, that the one suf- 
ficient reason which will always forbid that some World-Order 
should be put in the place of God, is to be found in the simple 
fact that no order is separable from the ordered material in 
which it is realized, still less can precede such material as a 
conditioning or creative force ; the order must ever be a rela- 
tion of something which exists, after or during its existence. 
Hence, if it is nothing but Order, as its name says, it is never 
that which orders, which is what we seek, and which the ordi- 
nary notion of God (however inadequate in other respects) 
determined rightly at any rate in this, that it regarded it as a 
Real being, not as a relation." 

We cannot pursue the subject further. All efforts to empty 
the Universe of a Personal Author and Sustainer must face the 
rebuke of the Hebrew Prophet, " Shall the work say of Him 
that made it, He made me not ? or shall the thing framed say 
of Him that framed it, He had no understanding? " 



ETHICAL. 313 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

ETHICAL. 

Self-activity necessary to Morality. No Liberty in Sensibility or Cogni- 
tion, as such. Choice. Motives. The ' Good.' Obligation. Man held 
to be Omniscient. No Obligation in Selfness. Altruism. How the Will 
of the Supreme Good is known. The ' Categorical Imperative.' 

IT is idle to dispute that there can be no moral good if there 
be no liberty of action. As a universal fact of conscious- 
ness, no man is held to be the author of a deed if it be known 
that he was absolutely compelled at all points to do the deed. 
Indeed, we do not even say, in such case, that he did it. For 
example, suppose one were taken by force and placed upon 
one's knees before an idol ; it would be sheer perversion of 
words and sense to say that that man knelt to the idol ; it 
would be impossible to think of him as in any wise responsible 
for the action. And this must be true in all cases where the 
possibility of self-activity is absolutely cut off. 

Now there is no question here as to whether we are bound 
ultimately, as some hold to be the case, by a rigidly predeter- 
mined order, or not. All that we say, for the purposes of this 
argument, is that if we are so bound, in every particular, we 
are not responsible, and the actions attributed to us are in no 
sense ours. 

Now of the three fundamental modes in which personality 
manifests itself, — sensibility, cognition, and volition, — two, as 
such, are absolutely bound. Sensibility is, if we may so say, 
the motive or propelling power ; cognition, the knowing or in- 
tellectual power ; while it is reserved for the will to give direc- 
tion and control our actions. 



314 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

That the sensibilities are compelled to receive whatever is 
impressed upon them by stimuli, without the possibility of the 
sensibilities themselves varying their reactions in response to 
such stimuli, is easily seen. In a given state of my visual 
organs, and with my eyes fixed upon a page, can they create 
or drive away the characters which I see ? If a sharp instru- 
ment be thrust into my flesh, is the pain of my making? can I 
bid it begin or cease ? A rose is brought within the radius of 
my olfactories ; am I at liberty to perceive its perfume or not? 
So long as I am conscious, I am compelled to suffer just such 
pain, or perceive just such agreeable affections, at that moment 
as my nervous organism in its then state is competent to reveal. 

The case is equally obvious with respect to the intelligence. 
It, too, is fast bound. By the understanding I am made to 
know the meaning of the words on the printed page ; that the 
instrument is sharp, and has pierced my flesh ; that the rose has 
an agreeable perfume. Can it, in its assumed state, do less or 
more ? Can it tell me that the word ' rose ' is composed of 
more or less than four letters, or that it is not the name of a 
flower? Can it tell me that the sharp instrument is a perfume, 
or the perfume a bodkin? It must render to consciousness, at 
any particular moment, just such report as the degree of atten- 
tion and its then power is able ; and that as absolutely as an 
instantaneous photograph must respond to the conditions of 
light and shade at the instant of exposure. It tells me that 
what I read is interesting or dull, melancholy or humorous, true 
or false, as it is competent. True it is that different intelli- 
gences, or the same intelligence at different times, pronounce 
divers judgments upon the same thing. It is often deceived : 
sees what is false as true, and the true as false ; it may be con- 
fused or in doubt ; but it has not two voices at the same instant. 
For the nonce it is what it is, and has no power in itself to 
change the result. And thus thought, as such, has in it no 
possible element of liberty. 



ETHICAL. 315 

It is, therefore, vain to look for the ground of morality in 
either thought or feeling as such ; and any system of ethics 
founded upon Pleasure, or Happiness, or the ' Fitness of 
Things,' or Utility, or anything whatever which reaches no 
higher than thought and feeling, is founded upon a miscon- 
ception of the psychical conditions of personality. 

Where, then, shall we look ? We have only the Will left ; 
and if moral accountability exist at all, it must depend upon 
this master-mode of the self. 

We have seen abundantly already that sensation and thought 
cannot be numerically separated from the will, nor the will from 
either of them. It is not enough that the eyes be open, and 
the page exposed, to read. There must be attention, in one 
degree or another. But what is it to attend ? It is to energize 
or exert power. There is energy of some sort in all thinking 
and feeling, even in the illustrations used above, in which the 
dominating elements, sensation and understanding, were em- 
phasized ; there was also present, of course, some degree of 
volition. When I withdrew from the sharp instrument it was 
not sensibility that acted, even though the movement was auto- 
matic ; nor when I discovered, as was possibly the case, that 
there was a mischievous urchin behind the pin, it was not the 
intellect that administered chastisement. It was the self, com- 
prehending the state of the case through sensation and under- 
standing, which put forth the volitional energy. 

It is not necessary to go over again the question of this free 
activity. It is simply a fact of consciousness forced upon us, 
affirmed in consciousness in the very act of denial, and just as 
certain as that there is anything to deny. 

One point, however, we must consider for a moment, and 
that is, the action of motives upon the will. Motives there are, 
though it is quite certain that they are not always discoverable 
in consciousness, as is shown by the constant declaration that 
one does not know why one did or said this or the other thing. 



3l6 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

In them, as such, we have seen that there is no freedom, just 
as there is none in all that follows the purposive epoch — the 
actualization of an act of will. But the question is this : Can 
any one honestly declare that the motive which governed his 
action in any case, he not being in a hypnotic or other abnor- 
mal state, was so strong and so definite in consciousness that 
he could not have disregarded it? It may be answered that 
even if one felt that one could have set it aside, one would 
have had a motive for doing even that. This is clearly to shift 
the point. The question is not whether one is so bound that 
no action is really his own, but whether he knows and feels 
himself so bound that the actions which are attributed to him 
are not his, but are the result of an irresistible compulsion con- 
sciously due to environment. There can be but one answer ; 
and so whether, as known to a hyper-human being, we are 
actually free to will or not, we feel — and in this sense know 
— that we are ; a knowledge just as certain as that there is an 
external world. It is a fundamental fact, revealed to us in the 
only way anything can be known to us, and which admits of 
no practical dispute, whatever speculation may suggest. 

But all free activities are not, therefore, moral. It is neces- 
sary, then, that we should arrive at some definition of the 
'good.' From what has gone before it will appear at once 
that we must look for its ultimate ground in the one Infinite 
Personality, — the good for us being that which is in harmony 
with his laws, and the evil, that which is in conflict therewith. 

But there are two obvious senses in which we may use the 
word ' good.' It may mean anything which promotes the 
growth or development of ' thing ' ; as the building up of tis- 
sue in the body, in the animal and vegetable worlds ; or 
causes any economic or esthetic change in the material world. 
We speak of good health, good food, good fortune, and in 
general, of anything which has value, that is, ministers to the 
happiness and general well-being of man. These all fall under 



ETHICAL. 317 

one or other of two heads, — the pleasurable or the useful. 
Attempts have been made to find the end of all human effort 
in either of these ; giving rise to the systems of Hedonism, 
with Hobbes as its most notable exponent in modern times, 
and Utilitarianism, with Bentham as its chief exponent. They 
both, together with a number of other phases held by eminent 
writers, may be classed under one general head — selfism. 

The other sense of ' good ' is synonymous with virtue. This 
is moral good, and finds its essence, not in the end of the 
action, but in the act itself. 

But as there must always, in any action, be an end towards 
which the effort tends, in virtue, the end is never self, but the 
not-self. This is now commonly called Altruism. The essen- 
tial difference between these two kinds of good lies in this : 
selfism looks inward ; Altruism looks outward. 

In selfness there can be no obligation ; for no law can eman- 
ate from the self, which the self cannot at any time set aside. 
We do indeed speak of "being true to oneself"; but in any 
such case we shall find, upon analysis, that we mean to hold 
the self true to some rule or principle which has its reality 
over and above self. In any system which has one's own bet- 
terment or gain, or satisfaction in any form, for its motive, we 
must recognize an inflow towards the centre and source of 
action. It is acquisitive in its nature, and the only law which 
governs or moves the actor can look no higher for its source 
and authority than the individual personality itself; and thus 
cannot be binding in the slightest degree one moment longer 
than held to by the self. For such an action the supreme 
power is in the self, and it must be able to loose as well as 
bind. 

In a selfless, or altruistic volition, the flow or movement is 
from within, outward. There is a recognition of a law laid 
upon the self from a paramount authority, and so obligation 
emerges. There is a recognition of a ' Law-Giver,' who is 



318 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

paramount to the self, and ' duty/ ' ought/ ' accountability/ 
gain their meaning. This source of law with the child begins 
with parents and masters, and rises through the stages of all 
human law, express and implied, in society and government 

But one soon finds that there is a source of law which is the 
1 ground ' of all human laws, — a source above and beyond the 
temporal — proceeding from the Author of all rule and author- 
ity — the Infinite Law-Giver. His laws come to us in a two- 
fold order : one the law of mechanism ; the other the law of 
personality. We call the one Nature, the other Spirit. 

Now Nature, or Mechanical law, bears in her hands her 
rewards and punishments visible and open. Her voice is, Do 
this and you shall surely have your pay in current coin : or, If 
you do not this, behold the rod ! It is a system of open and 
avowed rewards and punishments. One who follows the bent 
of a desire does it because he expects the gratification which 
attends it. One who takes bodily exercise does it because he 
expects increased health and strength : one who, relying upon 
nature's law of compensations, gives up leisure for toil, expects 
return in money, in skill, in learning, in power of one or other 
of its thousand sorts. He does not, it is true, always get what 
he expects. That would be too much, — that would mean the 
entire satisfaction and saturation of his nature ; he would not, 
and could not, look further. But he does get just what nature 
promises, and what he knows she promises, if he be at the 
pains honestly to inform himself. He gets satisfaction up to a 
certain limit, more or less sharply denned ; but he knows that 
there is such a limit, and he knows when he is passing it ; but, 
for the sake of some remaining sparkle, he is willing, too often, 
to drink the dregs which he clearly sees. 

This pleasurable or happiness stage, in the order of nature, 
does not wear the rigorous aspect of law. There is small 
token of compulsion, — her aspect is one of smiles and en- 
ticements. This, because she must play the nurse to man's 



ETHICAL. 319 

higher life ; and, in order to lead him forward to a proper 
knowledge of his self-developing and self-governing functions, 
there must be more caresses than cuffs. But, if she is felicitous 
and gracious, she is at the same time firm and inexorable. 
She is sure to show the danger line ; and if it be not heeded, 
we must take the consequences. Nor does the plea of igno- 
rance avail. If one, under the firm conviction that one is 
sweetening his tea with sugar, should use arsenic instead, the 
result would not be less fatal because the result was not fore- 
seen. If one should walk off a piazza in the dark, one's con- 
fidence that there was no danger would not save a broken 
limb. So, too, if an engineer build a bridge out of bad 
materials, thinking them good, or upon wrong calculations of 
the strains, calamity would result as surely as if he had intended 
to produce the disaster. Thus it is that nature holds every 
man to the same account as if he were omniscient. She gives 
us the power to inquire into, and find out, her ways, and 
abundant warning that she makes no exception in her mechan- 
ical order, and that we act — must act at our peril. 

In all this phase of nature's order, we are but accepting her 
gifts, — using them rightly to our profit, or wrongly to our 
hurt. Clearly there can be no right or wrong, in a moral 
sense, since we are in the attitude of beneficiaries, — accepting 
her bounty to our own gain, or abusing it to our loss : and this 
embraces the whole sphere of our sensuous, intellectual, and 
esthetic life. 

But this realm of ' things ' is not all of life. This is but the 
acquisitive — the inflowing phase of man's existence, in which 
self is consciously the object and recipient, in mind and heart, 
of the good gifts of the One Infinite Source of All Good. 
These gifts are good, in a right sense, only as they are regarded 
in the light of this Infinite Activity, — good because they are 
given, — because they issue forth from the Absolute Person- 
ality. They are good to us, because they meet the uses and 



320 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

desires of our nature ; but not in us, because they are but the 
accidents and occasions of self-activity and self-development. 

The radical fault in all systems of morality founded in self- 
ism is, that they stop in, and cannot by any possibility rise 
above good, in this reflected or borrowed sense. They rest 
in good to man from God, and cannot logically, in any possible 
way, find room for good in man, for the love of the good — 
which is only another way of saying — for God's sake. 

The second and higher aspect of Law, which we have called 
the Law of the Spirit — for and through which the lower phase 
is entitled to reality — is the exact contradictory of this Law 
of Nature. In it there is an outflow, in obedience to a recog- 
nized obligation laid upon self. It is a free activity, rendered 
possible by the fact of man's power of self-determination. 
Though infinitely less in degree, it is of the same nature as 
that natural good, which we have been considering, regarded 
from its preternatural or divine side. That looked from God 
toward man ; this looks from man toward God. God gives to 
man ; man, by the power given him, gives to God. God, as 
absolutely free and of infinite power, is All Good. Man, as 
bound about on all sides, is free only in the purposive epoch 
of the will. He is in this one respect, in the ' image ' of his 
Creator ; so that as God is the source and ground of All Good, 
man by this power of self- activity — itself a gift to him — is 
competent to be the source of some good. And just as all 
Natural Good — the World-Gift, is the creative out-go from 
the Infinite, the All-Giver, so the limited, the little good man 
is competent to, is the purposive outflow from self. This is 
morality ; — this is self-lessness. 

With this principle well in view, we can have no great diffi- 
culty to determine, at least theoretically, the moral quality of 
any action. Whatever is for the betterment of another is 
moral ; whatever is for the sake of self, without prejudice to 
another, is morally indifferent, and will be profitable or harm- 



ETHICAL. 321 

ful according to whether the judgment is sound or faulty, 
assuming it to be honestly followed. If not honestly followed, 
it will be, in so far, hurtful. That which is purposely hurtful 
to another is wrong, — is evil. 

With regard to self-less or moral action. As we have seen, 
it must be altruistic, that is to say it must have an object 
which is not self, and the purpose must be the betterment 
of such object. But the moral quality does not lie in the 
object, nor in the actualization which follows the purposive 
epoch. The intended good ' thing ' may utterly fail of the pur- 
pose by accomplishing nothing, or even by working a positive 
hurt to the object. For example, one with a benevolent pur- 
pose may buy bread to feed the poor. It may never reach 
them, or reaching them, may prove to be unwholesome, or 
even poisoned, and so work destruction. Such results do not 
in the least affect the virtue of the volitional factor, and so the 
action itself. The moral quality, thus, lies neither in the 
material of the action, nor in the result, but in the purpose. 
The fact is, that both the material and the result are mechani- 
cal. It is only the will in the purposive epoch that is free. 
The motions of hand or tongue are neither of them free ; for 
once the purposive energy of the will is put forth, the motor- 
nerves and the muscular response are in no essential point 
different from the blind action of a machine. The tongue or 
hand may not move at all, or may move in a different way from 
that intended, entirely dependent upon the degree of excellence 
in the bodily organism. 

In the same way, the result of the movement, in its immedi- 
ate aspect, is movement only. Whatever psychical effects may 
follow will be mediate or secondary, depending directly upon 
the use made by other personalities of such movement as a 
stimulus. 

Now the object towards which this free-purposive energy is 
exerted in a moral effort must be, either other individual per- 



322 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

sonalities, or the One Infinite Person. With a child in the 
early stage of moral development, it will be mother, nurse, 
playmates, or even pets, towards whom this energy is exerted ; 
but after a certain stage of moral discernment is reached, 
largely dependent upon education, it will be discovered that 
there is a Power above and beyond all these which is the 
source of all good ; — and from this time forth, individuals and 
the All-Father can never be disassociated in a moral action. 
No good ' thing' can be purposed for the betterment of any, 
which does not accord with the more general purpose to 
will in harmony with the Infinite Will : and wherever there is a 
temptation towards such divorcement, the Infinite must take 
precedence, or the effort ceases to be virtuous. 

But now the question arises, How can we know the will of 
the Infinite Good ? The answer is, We know it just as we know 
anything else which is disclosed to us — that is through the 
understanding. By virtue of the primordial order written large 
upon the nature of the self, and of the capacity given in accord 
with it, we must understand or co-ordinate the phenomena of 
the world about us ; and as we gather knowledge of ' things,' 
little by little, so we must begin to construe actions, as well in 
the realm of the ' good ' as in the realm of ' things.' In the 
latter sphere in which we distinguish the mere useful or pleas- 
ing, and in which there is no necessary moral quality, the 
understanding is not faultless, but varies from time to time, — 
pronouncing that useful, pleasing, or true, which, upon more 
reflection or in better light, is seen to be hurtful, impleasing, or 
false. In like way, the understanding has no claim to infallibility 
in its judgments in regard to the morally good. And thus it 
is that we see a wide difference, in many points, as to what is 
held to be good among people of the same general environ- 
ment, as well as in those widely separated in space and time. 
But as there is a large area of general agreement, with a nar- 
rower circle of absolute and necessary agreement in the judg- 



ETHICAL. 323 

ments of the understanding in the sphere of sensuous and intel- 
lectual truth, so there is a large area of general moral truth, 
with a correspondingly narrow inner circle of absolute moral 
convictions ; and the agreement in the universal consciousness 
of men is not measurably larger in the one case than in the 
other. 

For. example, in the sensuous and intellectual domain, people 
differ as to the agreeability of the flavor or perfume of fruits ; 
as to this or the other theory of economics, this or the other 
explanation of geological, astronomical, or chemical phenom- 
ena, with a large area of agreement. They agree entirely upon 
the fundamental principles of mathematics. 

In the domain of moral truth, they differ as to the morality 
of horse-racing, cock-fighting, card-playing, the use of intoxi- 
cating liquors, and many like points. They agree as to theft, 
cruelty, injustice, selfishness, and all that can be called essen- 
tial. There is no more doubt of a general consentient voice 
in moral than in intellectual truth. 

That a moral action has a different character from all other 
actions is chiefly attested by the fact that consciousness com- 
pels us to recognize an obligation to put forth this purposive 
energy in the case of moral action, and in no other. The 
1 thou shalt,' ' thou shalt not,' are laid upon the self. This is 
the ' Categorical Imperative ' of Kant. The question as to 
whether it is a fact of personality, or not, has to be carried to 
the tribunal of every man's consciousness. That the answer 
can be but one way, is attested by the languages of all peoples, 
by the existence of human law, and by every man's actions. 
There is no one who does not use the word ' ought ' in some 
form of expression or other, and who does not hold his fellow- 
man to an accountability. It does not persuade nor counsel, 
but commands, and we recognize its authority. 

It is a most significant fact, that this sense of obligation 
attaches to no other class of actions than the moral. When 



324 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

an act lacks the before-mentioned characteristics of morality, 
it may be done or left undone, and the word ' ought,' in its 
right sense, does not fit the case. No obligation is felt to take 
one, rather than another, of two walks, when the object is 
mere recreation ; or to eat of a particular dish at table, to sit, 
stand, run, or do any other act, when the relief of or injury to 
another is not an issue. But any or all of these may become 
moral by making them touch, in any serious way, the well-being 
of others ; in such case obligation immediately attaches. 

And now the further question presents itself: Why should 
the class of actions which we call moral, enjoy a higher pre- 
rogative in consciousness than those which are merely prudent 
or expedient ? The simplest answer to this question is, Because 
they do. It is quite analogous to the question as to why the 
whole is seen to be greater than the part. That and this are 
presuppositions of Self-nature — intuitive and immutable laws 
of our being. From the relative point of view, they are en- 
titled to this pre-eminence because they touch the supreme 
destiny of man as an individual and a race. 



THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF CONSCIENCE. 325 



CHAPTER XXX. 

THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF CONSCIENCE. 

The admonitions of the moral monitor. Conscience discovers itself 
only upon change of moral purpose. Analogy between the functions of 
conscience and inertia. Analysis. An illustration. Moral momentum. 

WE have not yet exhausted the facts of consciousness with 
regard to moral action. Not only does obligation dis- 
cover itself to us in all acts possessing moral quality, but an 
admonition or penalty follows the failure to respond to an obli- 
gation laid upon us. When the understanding makes it plain 
to us, that a particular action which lies before us ought to be 
done, and we do it not — or, that it ought not to be done, 
and we do it, we feel a dull, heavy distress about the heart, 
which we can neither avert nor control. It is undoubtedly a 
reflex action, and is unmistakable in character. It attends no 
other sort of actions than those in which we are made conscious 
of moral, obligation, and only follows a wilful disobedience of 
our sense of right. In this it is altogether unique. We may 
run into danger, make a pitiful blunder in judgment, or stake 
our fortunes upon a desperate hazard, and all with the worst 
results ; but no one will assert that conscience obtrudes itself 
upon us under any of these circumstances. There are sen- 
sations, very distinctly discoverable on all these occasions, — 
confusion, terror, shame, sinking- of-heart, but none of them 
can be in the least mistaken for that peculiar sensation which 
we call ' qualms of conscience.' 

This moral monitor is not, then, always discoverable : it is 
indeed never active where mere intellectual or esthetic ques- 



326 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

tions are in issue. But is it always discoverable where there is 
moral activity? We think not. A right-minded man, following 
uniformly what he understands to be right, though constantly 
passing upon such questions, will rarely feel the presence of this 
admonitory sensation ; never, if there be no departure, nor pur- 
pose of departure, from his conception of right — a state of 
case which could never be, except in one absolutely perfect. 
But where the right course is plainly seen, and the obligation 
to follow it clearly confessed in consciousness, if one wills not 
to yield to the obligation, one is sure to feel the dull thud of 
conscience. If one change his course from open, or intended 
disobedience, this action of the will is followed by a corre- 
sponding lightness of spirit, which is called the approval of 
conscience. Thus conscience discovers itself only upon the 
change, or purpose of change, from right to wrong action, when 
it will be deprecatory ; or from wrong to right, when it will be 
commendatory. Its field of action, therefore, is entirely 
analogous to that in which causation finds opportunity — in 
change. 

Conscience is not an illuminating, nor judging power, in any 
sense. It is itself perfectly blind, and always reactionary or 
negative. Hence we cannot say with Reid, and perhaps the 
majority of writers on the subject, that conscience is the ' can- 
dle of the Lord set up within us to guide our steps.' It is 
rather a hand-rail to keep us in the right way. It does not 
point out the way — that is the office of the understanding; 
but when we know the way, or are thoroughly assured that we 
do, it does not fail to protest against any departure from it. 
It varies in intensity with different people, without doubt, and 
at different times, in the same person, according to the sudden- 
ness and gravity of the change in conduct. 

Now there is a striking analogy between this conserver of 
the moral world, and inertia, the conserver of the physical 
world. All bodies, by virtue of inertia, let it be remembered, 



THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF CONSCIENCE. 327 

resist change, either with respect to rest or motion; that is, 
a body at rest resists all effort to move it, and once in motion 
resists all effort to deflect it from its rectilinear course, or change 
its velocity. The importance of inertia in the mechanical world 
cannot be exaggerated. By virtue of it the woodman's axe is 
enabled to do its office ; while it maintains the movement and 
stability of the celestial world. What it is, we do not know. 
It is essentially negative in character, — never acting unless 
first acted upon. It is the conserver of the mechanical uni- 
verse. Now this is just the office which conscience performs 
on the psychical side of personality. 

Let us examine this somewhat in detail. Inertia is purely 
reactionary, — does not exert energy, but resists simply. In 
like way, conscience does not manifest itself unless there is 
conscious deviation, or purpose of deviation, from the moral 
path upon which the self is moving ; but immediately upon the 
advent of a purpose of deviation, it sets up its resistance. Again, 
a body once settled in its new path after inertia has made all 
the resistance competent to it, there is no further resistance — 
inertia becomes again quiescent. So with conscience. When 
the will has acted, and conscience has been overridden, the 
protest ceases, and is not felt so long as there is no glancing 
back — no entertainment of the once felt obligation ; but when- 
ever purpose becomes tremulous, the reactionary emotion of 
conscience begins again to act, and the will is solicited to 
relinquish the path taken up against its protest, and return to 
that which is seen to be of obligation. 

Once more, it will be remembered that the line of right 
action, as disclosed by the understanding, is not absolute and 
unvarying, but changes from time to time in the same person. 
That which we at one time, and under certain circumstances 
and teachings, thought right, we, under new influences and in 
better light, come to see was narrow and ill-founded ; and we 
determine to abandon the old way for the new. Now, if con- 



328 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

science is blind, like inertia, and knows nothing but. action, it 
must resist the change, even fr5m the worse to the better. Is 
not this in accordance with the facts of experience? The 
point is a delicate one, and the facts upon which to test it are 
scant. The change must be marked and somewhat sudden for 
the reaction of the moral monitor to be clearly distinguishable ; 
but most people probably have some experience upon the point. 
Let us take a case of frequent occurrence in America, — that 
of a youth brought up under the unquestioning conviction that 
it is sinful to play at cards, to dance, or to drink wine. Let it 
happen that, after a time, in associating with people who hold 
that the wrong is not in these things, per se, but in their abuse, 
his own judgment parts company with that of his father and 
mother. Will he not upon first indulging himself in these 
things, now regarded innocent, discover the admonitions of this 
blind monitor? Many persons certainly have felt such qualms, 
and if there has not been sufficient time for the moral current 
to settle in its new bed, every one must. So long as a thing 
remains merely a speculative opinion, there is no action on the 
part of conscience. The understanding is all the time modify- 
ing the sensibilities, but it is a slow process, and very gradual. 
The will must actively co-operate, not only in the prosecution 
of the enquiries of the understanding, but in purposive deter- 
minations to follow the new light in conduct when opportunity 
serves. Thus the current of one's moral nature is gradually 
turned ; but at every point on the one hand or the other, when 
the change is sudden, conscience makes a stand. 

This accounts for the fact that some men, persisting in evil 
ways, are not troubled by the stings of conscience, while others 
following like courses are always in a flutter. In the first 
case there is no thought of returning to the right way, and 
in the second the self is moving in a constrained path, and 
the will is ever on the point of giving up to the recognized 
obligation. 



THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF CONSCIENCE. 329 

But, it may be asked, how is it that men sometimes become 
utterly dead to the stings of conscience, or rather that con- 
science ceases to sting. The explanation seems plain enough. 
We may distinguish two stages of this condition : first, that in 
which by long and unswerving persistence in disregard of the 
still recognized obligations of right, the moral current has be- 
come sluggish, and the, at best, faint sensation has worn itself 
out by familiarity. There is almost no moral momentum, and 
therefore no reaction developed. 

The other stage is more melancholy. It is when the power 
of seeing what is right is almost gone. The will acts upon and 
modifies the understanding. It cannot by a simple mandate 
make it see a thing at any moment other than it actually 
appears, but in all matters of opinion it is easily warped by the 
indirect action of the will. Through interest and desire it can 
be blunted and blurred, just as a microscope or the eye itself 
can be injured — put out of focus or weakened — so that by 
misuse or abuse it is rendered almost useless. A thing which 
the judgment sees to be morally bad cannot in the same 
moment be thought good, but the will can throw hues of desire 
upon it, and after a time it will appear quite different. By a 
long-continued tampering with honest convictions, one may 
come at last to have small power — perhaps no power at all — 
to distinguish right from wrong. " If the light that is in thee 
be darkness, how great is that darkness." This is that con- 
dition which one may bring upon oneself denounced by the 
prophet : " Woe unto them which call evil good and good 
evil ! " Manifestly in such a moral state the conscience is 
dead. 

When, then, is this reaction in the heart most active? In 
those persons, clearly, who are most scrupulous to ascertain 
and do what is right. They gather a moral velocity by the 
accelerating energy of the will, so that the slightest deviation 
from the way they hold to be right causes them a far greater 



330 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

distress than a positive crime would to one whose moral ki- 
netic energy is small. Thus it is that one may know oneself to 
be in a low state of virtue, when, upon the perpetration of a 
wrong, there is no positive reaction discovered on the part of 
conscience ; and, on the other hand, no one's case is desperate 
who finds this reflex action still strong within him. 

There is still one point which demands notice. If the anal- 
ogy between the part played by conscience in the conservation 
of spiritual verity, and that played by inertia in the conservation 
of physical reality be complete, then, any increase of moral 
energy must be at the cost of a resistance overcome ; for in- 
ertia reacts to prevent increase of velocity, just as certainly as 
to prevent loss. That we do find such resistance can hardly 
be disputed. ' The last state is worse than the first.' The loss 
of momentum can only be regained gradually by the expendi- 
ture of a constant force ; and, that it is necessary to expend a 
great deal of moral energy to recover lost ground, everybody 
knows only too well. 

Let us try to make all this a little more practical by an illus- 
tration. Take a steamship, and let her be supposed in any 
great current of the sea, say the Gulf Stream. Now, assuming 
the vessel to be entirely motionless, she would nevertheless be 
carried forward toward the north at the rate of four or five 
knots an hour. But she is fitted up with engines by means of 
which to take on a proper motion of her own. She is also 
provided with compass and chart by which she can know her 
course. In addition to this, she has a rudder by which, 
through the man at the wheel keeping his eyes upon the 
needle, she is held upon her course. 

We recognize at once in the current which carries the ship 
blindly forward, the steady flow of vitality, the whole trend of 
subconscious activities, and the general environments of life. 
We are all impelled by nature, without thought or concern on 
our part, towards a higher evolution, — within, by the action of 



THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF CONSCIENCE. 33 1 

the heart in supplying blood to tissue, the lungs in their respira- 
tory functions, the whole nutritive system in digestion, and the 
world of reflex action ; without, by the reaction of place and 
circumstance in life, family, society, and government. 

In the ship's motive power, we see a likeness to the part 
played by feeling when fully formed in consciousness, which is 
the basis of personal mobility of body and mind. In the needle 
we recognize the line of right action as disclosed to us by the 
understanding, — rarely on the absolutely true meridian, and 
always fluctuating in some degree ; but, though passing and 
repassing the true line, through temporarily perturbing influ- 
ences, always returning to it when the disturbing cause is 
removed : while the chart shows the bearing of all points with 
respect to the grand axial line of conscious right. In the rud- 
der, we have the power of self-direction through the free activ- 
ity of the will at the helm. In the beginning of life, we are 
carried forward, almost wholly by the (to us) blind forces ; but 
after a time the masterful power of purposive control, in the 
light of the understanding, shows itself at the helm of right 
action, and from that time forth, the haven toward .which we 
sail we determine for ourselves. 

But we must not leave out of sight a most important factor 
in the ship's economy, one without which she could keep no 
course and could reach no appointed haven, but would drift 
hopelessly at the mercy of wind and tide. It is the reaction of 
the water upon her keel and sides, as well as upon the blades 
of her propeller. She could not move an inch if it were not for 
this reaction upon her propeller ; nor could she have any steer- 
age way, if it were not for the reaction of the water on keel and 
sides. This reaction is purely negative, unseen, and perhaps, 
unknown to most people ; but without it there could be no cer- 
tainty, no safety, and no directed motion at sea. And yet its 
immediate office is to resist — to resist change in direction, or 



332 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

change in velocity. This is inertia ; and this is the correspond- 
ing office of conscience in self-destiny. It is just as absolutely 
necessary in moral movement, and in the conservation of moral 
reality, as reaction in mass is in the mechanism of the outer 
world, and the conservation of physical energy. 



THE INFINITE PERSONALITY. 333 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

THE INFINITE PERSONALITY. 

Personal good implies personality in God. The Mosaic account of the 
origin of evil in man. Disobedience. Obedience. A class of theologians 
faulted. Conflict and agreement of the Finite and the Infinite. Theology. 
Religion. Human aspirations. Quotation from Mrs. Browning. Con- 
clusion. 

SO long as men know that ' good ' is, so long they must 
know that God is. Good, in its only right sense, presup- 
poses, and is inconceivable apart from, Personality; and Per- 
sonality, in its highest term, is God. The one indisputable fact 
of the universe for every man, we repeat for the last time, is 
Personality. In the moment of direst scepticism, the con- 
sciousness of doubt carries with it the further and higher con- 
sciousness of self, as a necessary and precedent fact : and unless 
one can arrive at such a stupendous egoism as to hold one's 
self to be the sole and only reality, subsisting in a sublime iso- 
lation of circumambient nothingness, one must know that there 
are other personalities out of and beyond one's own ; and that 
the universe is meaningless and inconsequent, except under the 
postulate of an Infinite and Absolute Personality — God over 
all. 

But we have further seen, that Personality is itself a mystical 
tri-unity, comprising sensibility, understanding, and will — that 
1 good ' does not lie in sensibility, because there is no element 
of freedom in it ; nor in the understanding, because it, too, is 
bound ; and that however necessary feeling and thought are, 



334 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

as accessory to the action of volition, freedom is found in the 
will alone. 

But if all things were indifferent — if there were no reason 
why one thing should be chosen rather than another, it is 
inconceivable that any one act of the will should be better than 
another ; that is to say, there could be no good and no evil. 
The consciousness of obligation, therefore, either self-imposed, 
or compelled from without, is a necessary postulate of the 
knowledge of good and evil. This consciousness of obligation 
is the discovery of law, and law carries with it the necessary 
presupposition of a law-giver : and thus we arrive again at God, 
the author of All Good. 

Now, in whatever way we may regard the Mosaic account of 
the fall of man, — whether we look upon it as a literal and 
exact account of an event historically true, and hold the garden 
of Eden to have been an actual garden — the tree of Knowl- 
edge, and the tree of Life, actual objects of sense, and so of all 
else in that simple story ; or whether, on the other hand, we 
look upon the whole of it as pure allegory, the candid and 
philosophic mind must freely admit the immutable truth under- 
lying it all ; and no literary ingenuity, no rugged sagacity, no 
scientific and technical terminology has ever been able to give 
better form and expression to the direful truth which it dis- 
closes. Man did fail in the beginning, and he fails to-day, 
to do the very and exact right, by seizing or accepting to his 
own use that which he knew, and knows, is forbidden him : 
and so, what the theologian calls sin came into and remains in 
our humanity as a fact in the consciousness of man, through 
disobedience. 

There is but one conceivable way in which man can be 
recovered of the disorder caused by, and still kept in our 
nature by disobedience ; and that is, by removing the continu- 
ing cause, and putting obedience in the place of disobedience. 
No mere feeling, however poignant and tender, — no grasp of 



THE INFINITE PERSONALITY. 335 

the intellect, however clear and perspicuous, as such, can ever 
repair the injury, and promote soundness of our moral nature. 
Holiness, it is true, implies and requires right desires, and 
honest thinking ; but right and honesty are meaningless terms 
apart from the free activity of the will. 

But, again, it must be remembered that heart and mind are 
not numerically separable from each other, or from the will ; 
but altogether form an essential unity — one indivisible person : 
so that while Tightness implies and requires an uplifting of both 
heart and mind, the paramount and active agent, in and through 
the whole self — the dpxn — the original and sovereign mode 
of personal order, is the will. 

Now, let it be confessed, that theologians have brought upon 
themselves much of the distrust and disfavor of which they 
complain, by assuming a too exact — a too ' He-can,' and 'He- 
cannot,' ' He-is,' and 'He-is-not,' spirit in dealing with the 
nature of the Lord of All Power and Might. We cannot, in 
the nature of things, see the Infinite and Absolute Personality 
except through human limitations, and it is impious and unsci- 
entific to attempt to tear away, or peer through, the limitations 
which must ever bar us from the Inscrutable : but for all that, 
let us be careful that we do not fall back upon an equally im- 
pious and unscientific Agnosticism, under the specious convic- 
tion that we are assuming nothing. While we must admit that 
we do not and cannot know the Infinite and Absolute, in the 
sphere of the understanding, rightly directed reflection must 
teach us that there are the same limitations in any attempt at 
an ultimate knowledge of the finite and relative ; and that, in 
like sense, we can no more know these than the other. The 
finite is meaningless apart from the necessary implication of 
the infinite ; and the relative could never have had so much as 
the name, if the presupposition of the Absolute had not shot 
through and through what we call things and events. The 
learned physicist does not know, in a through-and-through 



336 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

sense, what his blow-pipe or scalpel is, — he does not know 
what water, air, or earth are : he does not even know that they 
are at all, with the certainty with which he knows that the 
' thinker ' exists ; so that, if the theologian's knowledge runs up 
into an unknown Infinite Person, his runs down into an Infinite 
Power, with the difference, if a choice must be made, clearly in 
favor of the Spiritual Absolute. The theologian does not know 
all about the One Good; but, through the indisputable con- 
sciousness of a sense of obligation, he does know something : 
and neither does the physicist know all about the materials in his 
laboratory, and even what he does know, has only a spiritual 
warrant for its reality. The latter's Agnosticism is wrong end 
first. He can, with reason, be an agnostic with regard to the 
Absolute Good, only after he has become an agnostic with 
regard to the finite ' things,' and that can never be so long as 
he acknowledges himself and l things ' to be. 

The Greeks knew the impossibility of reconciling, in the 
domain of the mere intellect, the eternal conflict of the limited 
and the unlimited ; and when they asked, How can the one be 
the many, and the many one? they proposed a problem which 
has obtruded itself in every effort at philosophic thought since 
their day, and will continue to confront us until God pleases to 
lift the veil that we may know Him as He is. 

This mystery stares us in the face in whatever direction we 
may turn ; — Matter and Spirit — Identity and Change — Cause 
and Effect — Life and Death — Good and Evil — Freedom and 
Necessity — The Infinite and Finite — Being and Non-Being — 
God and the Universe ! No one of all these concepts can be 
torn away from its correlative, without an utter annihilation 
of the other ; and so, we affirm again, that the visible things of 
this world are not more certainly known, in the highest sense of 
knowing, than the Invisible and Ultimate ground of their being. 

Theology is Philosophy with a special reference to the nature 
of God, His relations to man, and man's relations to Him. 



THE INFINITE PERSONALITY. 337 

Whatever may be construed touching the nature of Deity 
comes to us, as all construable knowledge comes to us, through 
the understanding. But the source and ground of the religious 
element in man is not in the construing power, but in the pre- 
supposition of the Pure Reason. By virtue of his discovery in 
himself of a sense of obligation and dependence, it is borne in 
upon man that there is a Power beyond and above him ; and 
that his well-being is dependent upon such power — beneficent 
or malignant — as he may look upon it. The religious ele- 
ment is not educated into man, though it may be developed 
and informed ; but when it is absent — if that can ever be — 
it has been educated out of him. This is abundantly shown 
by the history of races, and of individuals. 

Religious doctrine belongs to the domain of the under- 
standing, while religious convictions belong to the domain 
of feeling ; but the responsibility of developing right convic- 
tions and of true desires and aspirations depends upon the 
free activity of the will. The objective manifestation of the 
religious element is twofold — looking, from its benevolent 
side, to the well-being of man, and bearing fruit in alms-deeds, 
and all manner of benefactions, through the recognition of the 
paramount obligation to the Good. The other phase becomes 
articulate in the worship of the All-Good in love and awe of 
His Infinite Majesty. 

It has been said, that as men paint with colors to give an 
idea of things in strange countries, so God paints with things 
and peoples and events to give us notions of heavenly and 
supernatural things. We go with our faces turned down to 
the ground in search of creeping things, so long as we fail to 
read the spiritual and divine in what is spread out before 
us in land and sea, and in the heart of man. He who con- 
trived our hearts in the beginning, and tuned them to the 
1 level of every day's most quiet need/ gave them, as well, 
those preternatural strains which lift us into the transcendent 



33$ MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

world of the Beautiful and True, with a refrain, sweet and 
mystical, which lifts us higher still into those celestial realms 
which 

' God only and good angels know.' 

The roar of the sea does not more surely tell of the near- 
ness of the ' multitude of waters,' than this murmur in the 
heart tells of a supersensible and spiritual world, in us and 
about us, — a world' of spiritual Realities, in whose light may 
be read the manifold riddles of the transitory and seeming. 
The fact is that any philosophy which has not for its irov <ttu) 
the postulate, man is a spiritual essence manifest in the flesh, 
is founded upon ' the baseless fabric of a vision,' leads down- 
ward and breeds corruption. 

There is nothing so common that it does not, if rightly 
read, lead on to that which is higher ; and each stage may be 
said to be truer and more real than the one which preceded 
it. All earth and earthly things are types of the Infinite and 
Eternal : but the heart too often clings to the earth, and 
earthly things, and calls them real, while, giving only now 
and then a furtive glance towards the spiritual and abiding, 
it calls them shadowy and seeming. 

And yet the new is always old. When God spoke to Moses 
in the Mount, and bade him make a sanctuary to the Lord, 
that He might dwell among his people — when He bade him 
make the ark, and the mercy seat, and candlesticks, He charged 
him : ' Look that thou make them after the pattern which I 
showed thee in the Mount : ' or long before, when God made 
man in the beginning, He formed him after no new or strange 
device, but said, ' Let us make man in Our image, and after 
Our likeness ' ; and ' so God created man in His own image ' : 
and thus, throughout the temporal and transitory, we have 
only likenesses and figures of things higher and truer in the 
Mount of God. Our life is poor and mean, if we fail to see a 



THE INFINITE PERSONALITY. 339 

Reality above our work-a-day environment — to peer through 
the seeming and behold 

" The truth which draws 
Through all things upwards; that a twofold world 
Must go to a perfect cosmos. Natural things 
And spiritual, — who separates these two 
In art, in morals, or in social drift 
Tears up the bond of nature and brings death, 
Paints futile pictures, writes unreal verse, 
Leads vulgar days, deals ignorantly with men, 
Is wrong, in short, at all points. . . . 

Without the spiritual, observe, 
The natural's impossible; no form, 
No motion ! Without sensuous, spiritual 
Is inappreciable; no beauty or power : 
And in this twofold sphere the twofold man 

Holds firmly by the natural, to reach 
The spiritual beyond it, — fixes still 
The type with mortal vision, to pierce through, 
With eyes immortal, to the antitype 
Some call the ideal, — better called the real, 
And certain to be called so presently 
When things shall have their names. 
* * * * * * 

Every natural flower that grows on earth 
Implies a flower upon the spiritual side, 
Substantial, archetypal, all aglow 
With blossoming causes, — not so far away, 
That we whose spirit-sense is somewhat cleared 
May catch at something of the bloom and breath. 
****** 

No lily-muffled hum of summer bee, 
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars, 
No pebble at your feet, but proves a sphere; 
No chaffinch but implies the cherubim. 
****** 

Earth's crammed with heaven, 

And every common bush afire with God, » 

But only he who sees, takes off his shoes." 



340 MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY. 

True as all this is, and clearly as it has been seen by poet 
and philosopher, all through the ages back to Socrates and 
Plato, it is a melancholy fact, which every day brings more 
constantly to light, that there is no holy ground for the empir- 
ical philosophy which assumes to guide the spirit of the age. 
It is so busy with the natural that it fails to see the spiritual, 
without which the natural is impossible. Its curious gaze is so 
bent upon the mere mechanism, that it fails to feel the touch 
of the Infinite Personality which imparts the motion they so 
much applaud. Lord Bacon, with that mighty spirit of dis- 
cernment which enabled him to pierce through the outside 
of things to the reality beyond, says : " As it was aptly said 
by one of Plato's school, the sense of man resembleth the sun 
which openeth and revealeth the terrestrial globe, but obscureth 
the celestial ; so doth the sense discover natural things, but 
shutteth up and darkeneth the divine." 



INDEX. 



Agnosticism, 198. 

Altruism, 320. 

Animal world, 95, 152. 

Ants, 91. 

Apperception, 102. 

Architecture, 223. 

Art, 220 f. ; realism and idealism in, 

222 f. 
Association, law of, 125. 
Atoms, vortex-, 267; 'manufactured 

articles,' 273. 
Automatic action, 87. 
Axioms, 177. 

Beaver, 93. 

Boscovich, 259. 

Brain, 24; co-ordination, 26 f. ; areas, 
27; lesions, 29; electrical stimula- 
tions, 31 ; development, 35 ; mass, 
36. 

Browning, Mrs., 339. 

Brute creation, the, 95, 152. 

Carpenter, Dr., 122. 

Categorical Imperative, 228, 323. 

Causality, 171 ; in relation to time and 
space, 187 ; inexplicable, 292. 

Cell theory, 18. 

Certitude, lack of, 1-9. 

Change, problem of, 283 f. ; influence 
passing over, 287, 

Chaetodon Rostratus, 92. 

Charcot, Dr., 146. 

Chasm between mechanism and con- 
sciousness, 69 f. 

Choice, 231 ; freedom of, 314. 



Christian faith and evolution, 88. 

Cicada, the, 252. 

Cognition, 86 f. ; no freedom in, 313. 

Coleridge, 122, 140. 

Color, 64. 

Concepts, definite, 102; not like ob- 
jects, 117. 

Conscience, functions of, 325 f. ; anal- 
ogy of, with inertia, 326 ; illustration, 
330- 

Corti's organ, 49. 

Darwin, evolution, 17, 79; physical 
basis of sensation, 79. 

Deduction, 158. 

Descartes, anticipated modern psy- 
chology, 12 f. 

Divine Assistance, 290. 

Double consciousness, 144. 

Dreaming, 133 f.; dreams within 
dreams, 141. 

Du Bois Reymond, 16; on physical 
basis of sensation, 80. 

Ear, 48 f. 

Ego, pure and empirical, 105. 

Energy, 193. 

Ether, 272. 

Evil, origin of, 334. 

Evolution and devolution, 95. 

Eye, 60 f. 

Fechner's law, 41. 

Feeling, 199 f. ; scheme of, 200 ; quan- 
tity, 204 ; quality, 205 ; esoteric and 



342 



INDEX. 



exoteric, 208 ; rational, 211 ; esthetic, 

212. 
Fichte, 300. 

Force, 189 ; persistent, 192, 198. 
Foster, Prof. Michael, 20. 

Gases, the kinetic theory of, 262. 
Good, the, 227, 316; will of Supreme, 

how known, 322 ; the Infinite, 333. 
Gravitation, 269. 

Hamilton, Sir William, 183. 

Hearing, 48. 

Hegel, 305. 

Helmholtz, 266. 

Hobbes, anticipated modern science, 

14. 
Hume, 171. 
Huxley, Professor, cell theory, 19; 

physical basis of sensation, yj. 
Huygens, 15. 
Hypnotism, 145 f. 
Hypotheticals, 175. 

Idealism, 300 f. 

Illusions, 218, 254. 

Imagination, 126 f. ; scheme of, 127. 

Induction, 159, 180. 

Infinite, nature of concept, 280; con- 
flict of, with finite, 336. 

Inhibitory mechanism, 34, no. 

Innate ideas, 163 f. 

Instincts, inverse order with intelli- 
gence, 94. 

Integration and redintegration, 103. 

Jelly-specks, 90. 

Kant, 301. 

Knowledge, immediate, 114. 

Law of Excluded Middle, 167; of 
Contradiction, 166 ; of Identity, 166 ; 
of Sufficient Reason, 168, 175. 

Leibnitz, 15, 168, 170. 



Light, theory of, 270. 

Locke, 169. 

Logic, 155 f. 

Lotze, on local signs, 41, 119, 302, 309. 

Mass, a resistance, 296. 

Materialism, 196. 

Mathematics, dominates science, 275 ; 

contradictions in, 276; surds, 276; 

cissoid, 278; the infinite, 280. 
Matter, gross and sublimated, 250; 

construction of, 259. 
Maudsley, 80. 

Maxwell, Professor, 261, 265. 
McKendrick, Dr., 26; on physical 

basis of consciousness, 73. 
Mechanics, the foundation of physics, 

12 f. ; molecular, 266. 
Memory, 117 ; mechanism of, 119. 
Metabolism, 21. 
Mill, J. S., 181. 
Molecules, 263. 
Mosso, 139. 

Motion, incomprehensible, 295. 
Motives, 316. 
Music, 214, 223. 
Muscles, 32. 

Muscular co-ordination, 97. 
Mutilations, 26 f. 

Nerve-centres, time of action, 30. 
Nerves, 22 f. ; rapidity of transmission 

through, 30. 
Nervous system, 22. 
Newton's laws, 173. 

Obedience, law of, 334. 
Obligation, sense of, 317. 
Occasionalism, 288. 
One and the many, the, 10, 105. 
Organism, education of, 97. 

Painting, 222. 
Pasteur, 80. 
Penitence, 241. 



INDEX. 



343 



Perception, 113. 

' Persistent force,' 189. 

Personality, what ? 9 ; psychical fac- 
tor, 82 f. ; ground of action, 188 ; in 
relation to energy, 193 ; unity of, 
242 ; one person and two hypostases, 
244; only reality, 251, 298, 311. 

Phonograph, 121. 

Physical basis of consciousness, 70. 

Plato, quoted, 284. 

Poetry, 223, 225. 

Pre-established harmony, 289. 

Pressure spots, 42. 

Properties, of bodies, 3, 254. 

Protoplasm, 18, 20. 

Protozoa, 245. 

Psychic factor, 100. 

Pure Being, 256. 

Pure reason, the, 161 f., 179. 

Rational truth, 104. 

Reflex action, 23. 

Religion, 337. 

Romanes, Professor, Rede lecture, 15 ; 

motion and sensation, 70. 
Rush, Dr., 122. 

Schelling, 303. 

Schultze, 18. 

Schwegler, 307. 

Science, relation to older learning, 11 ; 

principle of modern, 12. 
Sculpture, 222. 
Self, an ultimate fact, 9, in; moral 

bearing, 313. 
Self-consciousness, 107. 
Sensation, 86, no; no liberty in, 313. 
Senses, not infallible, 4 ; specific, 38 ; 

touch, 39; taste, 44; smell, 45 f. ; 

hearing, 48 ; sight, 60. 



Skepticism, scope and limit, 1-9 ; 

practical and logical limit, 6. 
Sleep, 134. 

Smell, 45 f. ; hearing, 48 ; sight, 60. 
Somnambulism, 143. f. 
Sound, 50, 212. 
Space, 116, 182, 185, 294 f. 
Spencer, Herbert, 193 f. 
Structural development, 19. 
Sub-consciousness, 87. 
Syllogism, the, 155. 
Sympathetic system, inhibition, 34. 

Tait, Professor, 189, 264. 

Taste, 44 f. 

Theologians faulted, 335, 

' Thing,' what ? 254 {., 273. 

Thinking, 151 ; explicit, 162. 

Thompson, Sir William, 266. 

Threshold value, 40. 

Time, 116, 183, 185. 

Touch, 38 f. ; pressure spots, cold 
spots, etc., 43. 

Tyndall, Professor, sound, 54; physi- 
cal basis of sensation, 74, 120. 

Understanding, the, 149 f. 

' Unseen Universe,' quoted, 250. 

Vision, 216 ; illusions, 218. 
Vivisection, 26, 29. 
Voice, the human, 57. 

Weber's law, 41. 

Will, the, 229 f. ; conscious volition, 
230 ; liberty restricted, 231 ; inhibi- 
tory function, 232; moral aspect, 
240. 

Wordsworth, 217. 

Wundt, 15. 



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PHILOSOPHY. 127 

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128 PHILOSOPHY. 

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MONTGOMERY'S 
Leading Facts of American History. — Introduction price, $1.00. With 
full maps, illustrations, summaries of dates, topical analyses, tables, etc. 

" The best school history that has yet appeared." -— Principal Rupert, Boys' 
High School, Pottstown, Pa. 

EMERTON'S 

Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages. — Introduction price, 
$1.12. With colored maps, original and adapted. " 
" An admirable guide to both teachers and pupils in the tangled period of which it 

treats." — Professor Fisher, Yale College. 

And many other valuable historical books. 
GINN & COMPANY, Publishers, Boston, New York, Chicago, and London. 



